Short Abstract

Gut Futures explores health conditions, microbiome science, and everyday strategies for negotiating gut distress. Engaging queer and crip approaches, we focus on the politics of digestion, care practices and the technoscientific imaginaries which might shape resilient and inclusive futures.

Description

Gut Futures explores the digestive system as a locus of politics and care, by investigating health conditions and treatments. These include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and stomas, alongside microbiome science and everyday strategies for negotiating gut distress. In this panel we foreground non-normative guts as important sources of insight. The gut here is metaphorical and material, a naturalcultural site which disrupts assumptions of bodily autonomy, individuality and purity.

Microbiome research, pharmaceutical developments and smart health innovations promise futures of gut optimisation. For people with chronic gut conditions, however, futures can look uncertain, and temporalities can be structured, interrupted and punctuated with stigma, embarrassment, delayed diagnosis and inaccessible care. Importantly, individuals also find joy, interdependencies and bodily acceptance with and through their guts. Gender, race and sexuality intersect with issues of the gut, leading to different health needs, experiences of health services, and outcomes.

The gut is a multispecies ecology where microbial, human, inorganic and technological agencies co-produce bodies, environments and experiences. Drawing on queer and crip approaches to embodiment, we explore how digestive experiences challenge normative rhythms of productivity, movement and wellness. For example, ‘crip time’ invites us to rethink infrastructures like toilet access, clinical pathways and material supports including stoma supplies, emergency equipment and pharmaceuticals.

We welcome contributions which explore the gut as a site of governance, care, stigma, or speculation, including topics such as:

• gut-brain axis science and the politics of emotion

• public toilets and spatial justice

• microbiome research, gut tech and imagined futures

• queer/crip experiences of IBD, IBS and stoma care

• care-full and creative methodologies for studying guts

• food, pharmaceuticals and everyday survival strategies

By situating guts within STS debates on resilience, futures and multispecies care, this panel invites participants to rethink the politics and possibilities of digestion, opening up more just and liveable Gut Futures.

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