Thinking about life in terms of bio-signatures.

Astrobiology is a multidisciplinary scientific discipline that studies the origin, evolution, and conditions for life on Earth and in the universe. Because it works with ambiguous objects, biosignatures, at the boundary between the inert and the living, astrobiology represents a "biology of limits" (Helmreich, 2015), a discipline symptomatic of an instability in the concept of life in biology. My project aims to study the practices of these scientists, who question, reconfigure, and redefine the concept of life in biology. " (Helmreich, 2015), a discipline symptomatic of instability in the notion of life in biology. My project aims to study the practices of these scientists, who question, reconfigure, and push the notion of life to its limits.

Through laboratory ethnography within the UnLOC (Uliege Origin Center) astrobiology consortium, my project has two objectives. A) To analyze the identification of biosignatures as a particular articulation between visualization technologies, the construction of the professional gaze, imagination, and the researcher's sensitivity. B) To theorize how the strangeness of life and epistemic uncertainty as it appears in astrobiology can feed into anthropological reflections on the life sciences. Because astrobiologists study entities that are strange (microbes), distant (the cosmos), or distant in time (ancient Earth), this project will ultimately aim to understand how astrobiology research renegotiates what the world is made of and reveals new dynamics between humans and non-humans.

Thesis realised by Mouna Barkou under the co-supervision of Kim Hendrickx and Véronique Servais