Short abstract:

Humans and their microbiotas are yet another devastated ecosystem subject to a major loss of biodiversity. Body-milieu porosity is therefore the setting of another power struggle with existential implications. How do microbiome scientists enact such a crisis of nature, humanity and society?

Long abstract:

Thanks to sequencing, bioinformatics and computational technologies, the gut microbiota has become a prolific object of biomedical research. Post-genomic technologies produce a gut microbiome that could be qualified as an ecobiosocial interface: it stands as a modulating nexus between bodies and environments. From an analytical standpoint, microbiome studies reconfigure the ontoepistemic boundaries between what is commonly delimited as "the social" and "the biological". The biological subject and object of human medicine comes to be considered as an ecosystem with porous, dynamic and actionable boundaries. In turn, this porosity gets offered to individuals, health systems and political institutions as a locus of action and control, as a site for prevention, treatment, and optimization.

Inextricably linked to the porosity of human bodies with their ecosocial environments is the devastation of (this and others) ecosystems. Several studies have detailed how the ecobiosocial Human is subject to a dramatic loss of biodiversity in the industrialized world: an “invisible extinction” is happening in our gut. Thus, body-milieu porosity becomes the setting of a power struggle, of evolutionary deterioration, and of menacing uncontrollability. In this paper, we explore the negotiations around threats, values, and the ecobiosocial boundaries of humanity in the case of a specific international gut microbiota banking initiative: the Microbiota Vault. We argue that the practices and discourses of this initiative reflect and participate into the (re)production and circulation of a peculiar ontopolitics of the ecobiosocial Human: one that transforms the embodiment of a post-industrial society in a crisis of nature, humanity and society.