Somatic multiplicities: The microbiome-gut-brain axis and the neurobiologized educational subject

• Published in: Educational philosophy and theory Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 52 - 62
• Main Author: Reveley, James
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 02.01.2024; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Academic staff; Biosocial; Brain; Brain research; Criminology; dietetic subjectivation; Dietetics; Education; Educational philosophy; Foucauldian analysis; Foucault; Foucault (M); gut-brain axis; Higher education; microbiome; Morality; neurobiologization; Schools; Social control; Social scientists; Subjectivity; Tactics; Teaching process
• ISSN: 0013-1857; 1469-5812
• DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2023.2215427

Therapeutic translations of the microbiome-gut-brain (MGB) axis are reconstructing the educational subject in a manner amenable to Foucauldian analysis. Yet, at the same time, under the sway of MGB research social scientists are taking a biosocial turn that threatens the integrity of Foucault's historicizing philosophical project. Meeting that challenge head-on, this article argues that the MGB axis augments the neurobiological constitution of the educational subject by means of a dietetic mode of subjectivation. Absent a pedagogical element, there is a hollowness to critical academics' claims that holobiontic self-conceptions springing from the axis can elicit a resistant subjectivity. Though wild pedagogies might inform a resistant tactics of the self, contemporary self-technologies are - as Foucault has taught us - a pale shadow of the ancient Greek conception of dietetics as an holistic, embodied and ensouled practice. At the intersection between the disciplinary apparatuses of criminology and education, therefore, the MGB-driven biosocial turn unambiguously reinforces the social control function of schooling.