The Mushroom at the End of 2020
The impossible existence that fungi embody — of being in a dying world — feels particularly, and dangerously, relatable at present
Since reading Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibilities of Life in Capitalist Ruins, I’ve been fascinated by the brilliance of fungal life as they offer a model for thinking through the many forms of grief and despair that feel especially tender after the year we’ve had.
The impossible existence that fungi embody — of being in a dying world — feels particularly, and dangerously, relatable at present
in the midst of a global pandemic,
in the ongoingness of environmental degradation,
in the everafter of compassionless politics.
And while they seem an impossibility, fungi are also, somehow, the forms of life that make existence in this world possible. Fungi do the work of decomposition, of making space for new lifeways by processing dead matter.
Growth is not the pretty thing we paint it to be. Springtime is not only the time when flowers bud. Blooming happens only when bacterial communities enable particular kinds of transformation.
From decay, destruction, ruin, the world is made and remade.
Not only do fungi spring up in the “natural world” of the forest, but they also emerge in places like lifeless nuclear plants
to address
and to transform the harm *we* caused
into
something other than harm
while leaving the devastation to remain
confronting.
Mushrooms are not an icon for a neoliberal brand of resilience, as they are so often depicted. They are not elixirs for keeping you “immune” enough to continue labouring in the exploitative environments of pandemic capitalism
(as wellness culture and your toxic employers — is there a difference? — might have you believe).
The lives of fungi is not the metaphor for 2021’s “economic resurgence.”
I don’t want to see a return to things “as they were.”
I want to see new lifeways emerging from a careful attention to death and decay.
Fungi reminds us that way-making takes work.
Decomposition is the labour of processing, of attending to painful entanglements. It is not about ignoring the damage to clear the path forward. It is about metabolizing the world as *we* move through it [differently]. It is about allowing our entanglements to transform us and in turn, to transform the way out/back/forward/sideways/through.
So decompose
your racism
your homophobia
your transphobia
your toxic masculinity
your ableism
your self hatred
Do the work that makes living possible for everyone.
— Nari
My thinking is inspired by fungi, Dionne Brand and Anna Tsing
Brand, Dionne. “On Narrative Reckoning and the Calculus of Living and Dying”
Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World
Originally published at https://thetendertake.com on December 31, 2021.
