Inflammable object lessons: sustaining “life without a gut” on home parenteral nutrition

Abstract

Providing a detailed sociological case study of “life without a gut”, this article de-essentialises the gut as fundamental to metabolism and health, and de-fetishises the value of “real food” as a universal good. The study draws on qualitative research into the biosocial life story of Martin, who, since childhood, has lived on home parenteral nutrition (HPN), a technology that bypasses the digestive system by delivering nutrients directly into the bloodstream. It examines efforts to manage Martin’s “fire gut” through biomedical interventions, scrutinises HPN as a fluid object, and investigates the essential role of specific biosocial compartmentalisations of metabolism required for making HPN as safe and functional as possible. To explore the complex enactments of “life without a gut”, the analysis draws on the social topology of objects within (post-)actor-network theory, which demonstrates how maintaining objects’ identities may rely on reassembling the relations that constitute them rather than preserving their rigid forms. The study introduces an original concept of “the inflammable object” to articulate the modalities of life on HPN that are sustainable in the long term. In conclusion, the article reflects on the analytical potential of “inflammability” beyond this case and considers how it may help theorise the mode of modernity we currently live in.