University of Vienna

13:30-15:00

NIG Room 2-0-2
Universitätsring 1
1010 Vienna

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Cesar Enrique Giraldo Herrera, Ruth Anderwald, Stefan Schneider
Sensory Engagements with Microbes, Interdisciplinary Explorations of Human-Microbe Relation Affordances  

Contemporary relations with microbes have been framed by an objectivist epistemology, and by the understanding that our relations with microbes were either necessarily mediated by instruments or pathogenic, facilitating the war on germs. While developments of microbiome research in the last twenty years have revealed to what degree microbes constitute us, Western epistemology has a long tradition of assuming that the sensorium evolved exclusively to relate to the outside world. Taking inspiration from Amerindian shamanic onto-epistemologies, we explore ways to retrain the human sensorium to facilitate relations with the microbial world within. The laboratory explores how olfaction, entoptic vision, endotic sonocytology, tact, and other senses afford sensory means of engagement to the microbial worlds that populate us, potentially nurturing our dreams and everyday experiences. Thereby, it allows us to imagine alternative futures shaped by the acknowledgement of microbial intelligence, intentionality, and by interspecies communication, yielding a broader understanding of more-than-human society and diplomacy. Drawing from Amerindian perspectivism and Posthuman approaches, this laboratory challenges anthropocentric views by foregrounding microbial agency and questioning human/non-human boundaries. Merging scientific rigour with speculative, experimental, performative, and aesthetic practices, the proposed methodology aims to redefine how we understand and engage with microbial life.

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The MAE Conference 2025 is convened by the EASA Medical Anthropology Europe Network, the Health Matters Research Group, and the European Association of Social Anthropologists. The MAE Conference 2025 is officially hosted by the University of Vienna. Medical Anthropology Europe is a forum for scholarly and political discussion on the anthropologies of health and medicine in Europe and beyond. Health Matters works at the intersection of Critical Medical Anthropology, Global/Public Health and Feminist Science and Technology Studies, aiming to understand how health matters and how health is mattered.

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