Ecnotopie microbiotiche. Appunti per una sociologia dell'intestino

Abstract

The intestinal microbiome has emerged as one of the most generative and contested objects of contemporary bioscience, unsettling longstanding assumptions about the boundaries of the human organism and biological individuality. This article approaches the microbiome as a biosocial device through which the relations between embodiment, subjectivity, and the government of life are being reconfigured. Drawing on the sociology of the body, critical biopolitical theory, and relational ontology, it introduces the concept of intestinal socialization to describe the dual process by which microbial life is simultaneously shaped by socio-historical conditions and culturally constructed as a constitutive dimension of contemporary selfhood. Engaging with Foucauldian biopolitics, Bourdieu's theory of habitus, and the philosophies of Serres and Nancy, the article proposes the notions of infra-individual habitus and microbiotic ecnotopia as theoretical resources for thinking the intestine not merely as a site of medicalization, but as the originary locus of a subjectivity constitutively inhabited by its own porosity.