“Spurned Growths”

Abstract

The biologist Merlin Sheldrake has named the tendency for humans to privilege plants to the exclusion of fungi “plant-centrism.” Connecting Sheldrake’s claim to critiques of the Caribbean plantation system, this article argues that plant-centrism is inherent in plantation logic. While cash crops depend on fungal processes and networks, fungi are rarely acknowledged except where they lead to disease. They constitute a subterranean underside to plant production and, by extension, the plantation system. Working against plant-centrism, this article examines representations of fungi in Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World. Rather than overdetermining fungi as signs of decline, disease, and corruption, the article argues that the novel’s decomposers materialize antiplantation sentiment even as they underlie plantation grounds. Ultimately it suggests using fungi to reassess the novel’s scenes of ruination, recognizing that decomposition is a condition of possibility for new growth.