Fungal Rhizomes: Mycorrhizae and Posthumanism

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the material conditions of the Anthropocene continue to destabilise, urgent and heightened attention to diverse, more-than-human agents is imperative. One ecologically critical domain of life is that of fungi. Fungi, although important trophic links in their ecosystems, are often given short shrift as ecological agents when it comes to discourses around sustainability, whilst conventionally viewed (in Western thought) as either harbingers of disease and degradation, or primarily instrumental or aesthetic objects-in-the-world, reinforcing binary notions of anthropic exceptionalism. Drawing together the concept of fecundity, indebted to the non-fiction narratives of Annie Dillard, and the rhizomic model explicated by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this paper will argue that an effective means of undermining this ontological stratification between domains of life is realised through rhizoanalytic approaches to fecund contexts in fungal worlds, as they allow for the employment of methodologies which endeavour to articulate the multi-agential, embodied processes of worldmaking which occur ceaselessly within and around human bodies.