Teun Joshua Brandt | Symbiotic Narratives: Contested Agencies in Scientific and Literary Accounts of Human Holobionts

Teun Joshua Brandt | Symbiotic Narratives: Contested Agencies in Scientific and Literary Accounts of Human Holobionts | University of Groningen | Faculty of Arts & Faculty of Philosophy (Interfaculty Project) | Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia (promotor), dr. Fred Keijzer (promotor), dr. Florian Lippert (co-promotor)| 1 September 2022 — 1 September 2026

The discovery that symbiosis constitutes a biological key principle in the evolution of life profoundly questioned previous assumptions about the agency and individuality of organisms. Starting with the work of Lynn Margulis in the 1980s and increasingly since the turn of the millennium, organisms are no longer considered as single unitary entities, but rather as assemblages of various beings living in symbiotic relationships. The human body, like that of other animals, is now considered a holobiont: a host living in complex entanglements with its microbiota. This thinking has not only changed biological research (e.g., on the gut-brain axis in immunology), but also fuelled a fundamental philosophical discussion about the boundaries of individuals.

This interfaculty project aims to provide a better understanding of how we make sense of ourselves facing this paradigmatic shift in biology and the philosophy of biology. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s and Marco Caracciolo’s theories of form, it will extrapolate the key narratives of the biological and philosophical discussions on individuality and agency, and analyse how they are mirrored, depicted, transformed and questioned in contemporary speculative fiction. Parasitism and mutualism have become a substantial part of the topic repertoire of speculative fiction (SpF), including symbiotic fungi (David Walton, The Genius Plague), brain-enhancing microbes (Joan Slonczewski, Brain Plague) and an alien species helping humanity to survive at the cost of their autonomy (Octavia E. Butler, Lilith’s Brood), amongst others. Such literary representations are crucial factors in the emerging cultural narratives of symbiosis for a broader public: they have the potential to present, explain, and illustrate the complexities of a new symbiotic understanding of life and individuality, but might also criticise, question, subvert, and even misrepresent or obscure this understanding.