Speaker: Jamie Lorimer, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

To date the Anthropocene has been an antibiotic epoch, marked by systematic (if patchy) efforts to eradicate, control, and rationalise life. Widespread anxieties about the pathologies of such modern forms of biopower are informing a probiotic turn in the management of human and environmental health. Here formerly taboo lifeforms and process are being reintroduced into our bodies, homes, cities and the wider countryside. The aim being to use life to manage life, securing the circulation of biological and geophysical process to deliver desired functions and services.

This lecture critically evaluates this turn, focusing on the use of keystone species – ecologically significant animals capable of regulating ecological dynamics – to restore target ecologies. It draws on examples of rewilding in the ‘macro’ biome and biome restoration in the microbiome to identify a common ontology and ‘environmental’ mode of biopower (after Foucault 2010). The analysis offers criteria for critically evaluating the political ecologies of these probiotic environmentalities and their potential for hospitable government for, and beyond, the Anthropocene.

Drinks and nibbles will be provided in BH(NE) 6.05 after the late-afternoon seminar (from 17:00).

*If you are external to King's and would like to attend this event, please contact the event organiser