Governance of the gut

Abstract

The science of the human microbiome offers new possibilities for understanding embodiment and health. Microbiome dietary advice seems to celebrate the probiotic ethos of a more-than-human human, of an ecological body open and exposed to the environment, and of microbial life performing essential bodily duties. This science has the potential to explode concepts of individualism and self-control that are fundamental to the ideology of healthism. However, through my analysis of microbiome diet books, I argue that the possibilities of human microbiome science as it is taken up in dietary advice are constrained by the logic of healthism. In so doing, this article demonstrates the pervasiveness of healthist ideology within dietary advice, including discourses that appear liberatory. Instead of freeing the human eater from managerial self-governance, microbiome diet books further entrench practices of control and responsibilization. Dietary advice for the microbiome reveals something about the salience of healthism in U.S. culture—even when confronted with a scientific paradigm that rejects the premise of individualism and control, healthist dietary advice reorients self-governance down to the microscopic scale.