Paper short abstract:

This paper examines relations between humans, microbes and divinity in the Ganges River through the lenses of microbiology. I bring together viruses, holy water, and pharmaceuticals to explore alternatives to the configurations of “antibiotic modernity” that are averse to more-than-human diversity.

Paper long abstract:

The waters of the Ganges River are teeming with microbial lifeforms. Water quality testing and bacteriological analysis indicate extremely high levels of faecal coliforms and the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the river. According to scientific data the river’s waters are not fit for drinking, bathing and at parts not even agricultural use, all of which are central to the daily lives of the local population for subsistence and religious purposes.

In this paper I propose to look at the Ganges water as more-than-human substance, filled with microbes and divinity, to think about the different microbiological and religious approaches that collide in the river. More specifically I explore the entanglement of bacteriophage research and the purifying powers of the Ganga goddess in water that challenge the categories of modernity and tradition.

I contrast antibiotic understandings of microbes based on Pasteurian conception of public health that aim at erasing germs widely to more contemporary possibilities of using life to manage life that have been brewing in the same waters. I argue antibiotic approaches to microbes are intrinsically attached to capitalist forms of production, distribution and consumption that produce the current configuration of scientific and public health concerns and possibilities that impact all other aspects of daily life. Focusing on probiotic understandings of human-microbe relationship I consider alternative possibilities of doing science and medicine that are more attuned to more-than-human diversity.