At the close of 2012, the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced the end of the first phase of an aggregation of studies called the Human Microbiome Project (HMP). The news reports of the HMP focused on a particular sound-bite: “[t]he number of bacteria living within the body of the average healthy adult human are estimated to outnumber human cells 10 to 1.” To conceptualize the disproportionate ratio of microbial cells to human cells, scientists have borrowed the concept superorganism from sociobiology. My research critiques microbiomists’ use of superorganism to think through the human/microbe relationship. I argue that superorganism does not adequately describe the complexity of this relationship. To do this, I utilize Manual Delanda’s assemblage theory to explicate important disconnects between the research findings and the superorganism concept. I then turn to Derrida’s posthumanism to further critique microbiomists’ use of superorganism, arguing this conceptualization is a means to reconstitute the human and maintain Western anthropocentrism. I ultimately argue that, in light of human microbiome research, we have an opportunity to re-think the artificial binary of human/non-human, a divide that the concept superorganism does little to challenge.

Here is a video that describes a for-profit microbiome sequencing venture called uBiome: http://vimeo.com/82638108

P.S. Sorry I am late to the scene!