Our Microbial Lives: A Manifesto Against Eradication – Victoria Lee (Ohio University)

Abstract: There is a growing recognition in the twenty-first century of our dependence on microbes for virtually every aspect of the way we live, including how we grow our food, heal our bodies, and sustain our environment. Yet, microbes are different from other targets of conservation, such as butterflies and elephants: We feel differently about them. This talk traces the nature of microbial charisma as it has changed between efforts toward global eradication of microbial pathogens such as smallpox in the 1970s and the foregrounding of microbes as the life support system of the planet in climate policy after the 2000s. Drawing on research from her book, The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (Chicago 2021), Victoria Lee explores how humans have engaged with charismatic microbes in brewing and food production, industrial chemistry, and drug discovery. She invites us to rethink the modern history of human relationships with microbes in light of calls to foster a greater sense of kinship with nonhuman organisms toward a more sustainable future. In particular, she challenges us to consider alternatives to approaches dominated by the goal of absolute control or eradication, in line with the gradual discovery that we live inherently microbial lives.

Bio: Victoria Lee is associate professor of history at Ohio University. Her book, The Arts of the Microbial World (University of Chicago Press, 2021; awarded the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize for the Best Book in the Humanities, 2023), examined fermentation science in twentieth-century Japan, a society where microbes were distinctively known and used as living workers as much as pathogens, as a direct precedent to the more recent recognition of microbial ecologies as an inseparable part of human society in Europe and America. Her current work considers how twentieth-century microbial history offers insights into twenty-first century questions in light of the growing appreciation of microbes’ role in sustaining organisms at every level of life through the microbiome, mediating climate change (especially in agriculture), and contributing to innovations in green chemistry. She has held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, and her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Mediapart.