Posthuman Rhetorics

Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Posthuman Rhetorics

Someone on the media ecology list posted this and I have to admit loving this kind of stuff. Reminds me of the Humanities conference in NC. It has real implications for complex vitalism, posthumanism, rhetorical ecology, and material rhetorics: Bonnie Bassler: Discovering bacteria's amazing communication system

Bassler studies the ways bacteria communicate collectively, not as individuals. Similar to an ant colony, they release hormones/molecules that other bacteria sense/recognize. She calls it “talking with chemical words.” The releasing and reception of these molecules she calls “quorum sensing” because the groups of bacteria collectively “vote” with the chemicals and once they reach a certain tipping point in terms of numbers the collective group acts in particular ways. This functions both as intra and inter species communication. Some molecules are only recognized by the same species of bacteria, some are recognized across species. Bacteria don’t live only in groups of their own species so they have to have ways to negotiate these ecologies. Bassler’s team is hoping that this new information about the ways bacteria communicate will lead to new forms of antibiotics. Rather than killing the bacteria, they hope to disrupt their communication and stop groups of bacteria from becoming virulent. Plus you have to love the fact that humans are 10% human and 90% bacteria.

Just as an aside, I also like Bassler’s homepage. All of her articles are linked to a database of abstracts. I’m kind of surprised it isn’t full text. When are we in the humanities going to move toward these kinds of models?