Disgust

Abstract

A series of recent scientific and technological innovations have brought about changes over what, in popular cultures, have been distinctly categorized as objects of disgust. The current ecological crises call for novel solutions that sometimes are counter-intuitive to these cultural affects associated with cleanliness and what ‘is disgusting’. Fecal transplantation to counter gut dysbiosis, edible insects as sustainable alternatives to animal protein, mosquitoes as helpful vectors in global health interventions against dengue and malaria, and critters thriving in polluted environments are but a few examples demonstrating changes to notions of purity and danger as they manifest in the notion of disgust.

In this panel, we invite papers that reflect on disgust as a cultural specific, visceral response, with historical attachment to ideas of impurity and pathogenicity as well as how these notions might be reversed in new technoscientific practices. By sidelining human cognitive responses to disgust, we instead want to query the processes by which ‘disgusting’ is transmorphed into acceptable, normalized, or even desirable outcomes through technoscientific endeavours. How are notions of disgust reconfigured and to what ends? What kinds of novel multi-species entanglements are drawn in these practices? What kind of new practices do these reimaginations make possible? How do scientific understandings of ‘disgusting’ non-humans intra-act with our ingrained affective experiences of them? Enquiring the changing meanings of disgust enables deeper understanding about the creativity with which new solutions are crafted during extreme times.

Chair

• Luisa Reis Castro, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Individual Presentations

• Yucky today, okay tomorrow? The embodied rationality of rejecting recycled water in spite of Arizona’s water crisis - Marisa Manheim; Christy Spackman, SFIS - Arizona State University

• Enacting Good Shit: Choreographies of Fecal Microbiota Transplants - Sabine Biedermann C, Technical University Berlin

• Shit! - Tau Ulv Lenskjold, University of Southern Denmark; Danielle Wilde, University of Southern Denmark

Session Organizers

• Jose A. Cañada, University of Helsinki

• Salla Sariola, University of Helsinki

• Luisa Reis Castro, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)