Intro to Microbial Ethics

Catalog description

Microbial ethics in an anticolonial space faring future is a hybrid theory and hands-on course that examines microbial informed ethics as a guide for our travels beyond earth. This class takes the biopolitical and the geopoetical as our frame of reference: \\\The microbial\\\ We are ancient bacteria, in the event of an injury where large amounts of mitochondrial cells are spilled into the bloodstream, the human body still recognizes it as foreign bacteria and triggers a systemic inflammatory response. We shouldn't forget that symbiosis just means "together" + "living", and there are many modes of living together. \\\The geological\\\ Our bodies are starmass, but our thingness isn't just materially constituted, it is also historically coded. The thingification process of colonization transforms subjectivity into objecthood, ranked through animacy hierarchies to justify various forms of extraction and subjugation. In space, can we rewrite the possibilities of being and non-being?