Bacterial Epistemology and Postorganic Writing in Popol Vudú: The Poem as Symbiotic Colony

This article offers a posthumanist reading of Popol Vudú. Book 1: Nómade in Chile by Morales Monterríos, proposing that the poem functions not as lyrical expression but as a postorganic system governed by bacterial logic. The hypothesis argues that the text does not represent microbes–it behaves like one: proliferating, mutating, and adapting through linguistic, visual, and material processes. Drawing on theories by Haraway, Margulis, Braidotti, Barad, and Wolfe, the analysis explores how repetition with minimal variation, decomposition of lyrical voice, and the inclusion of living bacteria in the book’s visual compositions generate a symbiotic poetic structure. The result is a decentralized, rhizomatic epistemology in which language and life co-evolve. The poem challenges modern notions of authorship and subjectivity, presenting instead a field of co-affectation. Thereader becomes a co-writer: an active participant in the poem’s semiotic metabolism. Far from traditional lyricism, Popol Vudú offers a poetic politics of contamination and interdependence. Writing emerges not as representation, but as living process. In this framework, the poem becomes a symbolic organism: precarious, ecological, and alive.