Antibiotic resistance, planetary health and the mimetic trap: a historical account of present-day sanitary, environmental and social crises

Abstract

The industrialization of food production over the past century has triggered a series of sanitary crises related to antibiotic resistance. In this article, I contend that to understand the radical transformation of animal farming and its effects on public health, we need to inquire into the historical development of the knowledge on microbes, especially with regard to the agricultural industry's mobilization and repression of microbial metabolism to scale up food production. Moreover, I conceive of the so-called Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene as a postcolonial mimetic trap through which actors who didn't play an active role in the contemporary ecological collapse are subsumed into an indistinct 'we'. To disentangle this alleged collective subject created from accounts of planetary health, I focus on the scientific, social, and institutional histories of antibiotic production and antibiotic use that materialized in the epidemiological issue of antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, I highlight how the history of antibiotic use and resistance is intertwined with the ecological, social, and geopolitical dynamics created by intense industrial production and international rivalries during the Cold War. This article calls for the re-evaluation and creation of counter-narratives of the planetary impact of industry on microbes, local communities, patients, medical personnel, and the global poor.