American Disgust explores the racial underpinnings of food, microbial medicine, and disgust in America, arguing that perceptions of disgust and fears of contamination are rooted in the country's history of colonialism and racism. It analyzes how embedded racist histories of digestion and disgust permeate contemporary debates around fecal microbial transplants and other bacteriotherapeutic treatments for gastrointestinal disease.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 14 May 2024
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

  American Disgust: Examining the Racial Underpinnings of Food, Microbial Medicine, and Disgust in America
American Disgust, a book by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, explores the racial underpinnings of food, microbial medicine, and disgust in America. Drawing on colonial, corporate, and medical archives, Wolf-Meyer argues that microbial medicine is closely entwined with changing cultural experiences of digestion, excrement, and disgust that are inextricably tied to the creation of whiteness. He analyzes how embedded racist histories of digestion and disgust permeate contemporary debates around fecal microbial transplants and other bacteriotherapeutic treatments for gastrointestinal disease. At its core, American Disgust wrestles with how changing cultural notions of digestion create and impose racial categories motivated by feelings of disgust rooted in American settler-colonial racism. It shows how disgust is a changing, yet fundamental, aspect of American subjectivity and that engaging with it opens up possibilities for conceptualizing health at the individual, societal, and planetary levels.

American Disgust: Examining the Racial Underpinnings of Food, Microbial Medicine, and Disgust in America

American Disgust, a book by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, explores the racial underpinnings of food, microbial medicine, and disgust in America. Drawing on colonial, corporate, and medical archives, Wolf-Meyer argues that microbial medicine is closely entwined with changing cultural experiences of digestion, excrement, and disgust that are inextricably tied to the creation of whiteness. He analyzes how embedded racist histories of digestion and disgust permeate contemporary debates around fecal microbial transplants and other bacteriotherapeutic treatments for gastrointestinal disease. At its core, American Disgust wrestles with how changing cultural notions of digestion create and impose racial categories motivated by feelings of disgust rooted in American settler-colonial racism. It shows how disgust is a changing, yet fundamental, aspect of American subjectivity and that engaging with it opens up possibilities for conceptualizing health at the individual, societal, and planetary levels.

Weight: 386g
Dimension: 140 x 217 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517916244