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Narrating Companion Species

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The discoveries of bacterial insertions in the human genome, escapes of modified plant genes into corn’s wild relatives, and mutations of Avian Flu into potential pandemics raise concerns about how bioethics remains largely (and inaccurately) premised on the control of discrete bodies like “selfish” genes. Stories of companionship, a term that derives from com panere, or those who break bread together, suggest a more workable baseline philosophical and scientific model. Whether in new evolutionary theories of cells as constituted by partnerships of formerly independent bacteria or more ordinary stories of people and pets training together for sports like canine agility, tales that focus instead on what happens between mutually domesticated messmates (and their inevitable problems with indigestion) demonstrate the alternate aesthetics required of current genomic understandings of our own as irreducible from other species.

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