Emerging Knowledge in Times of Crisis: The Microbiome and the Porousness of Science and Literature in Adam Dickinson’s Anatomic (2018)

Not only do politics and society struggle to make sense of current and future existential challenges, but science, especially in inter- and transdisciplinary endeavours, tackles the multifarious and often inextricably linked emergencies of our time. This contribution explores the intersection of cutting-edge microbiome science and literary works of art and its vital role in Public Humanities agendas. By the example of Adam Dickinson’s unique poetry collection Anatomic (2018), the paper demonstrates how the emerging, rapidly growing, and paradigm-shifting knowledge of the microbiome is a symbol for the porousness of science and literature, which not only fuels scientific and aesthetic innovation by enabling manifold exchanges beyond disciplinary and academic boundaries but also points towards its specific precariousness. As not only the borders of science and literature become porous as a prerequisite and result of circulatory processes of collaborative knowledge production but also the borders of (human) bodies as the sites of this knowledge-making do, there seems to be nothing less to negotiate than what it means to be human per se pointing towards modes of being human yet to be imagined by science and literature, within and beyond Academia alike.