The Poverty of the Mushroom: On the New Organicisms
Abstract
Mushrooms, mycelial networks, the wood-wide-web – environmental thought has a recent preoccupation with the mycological as form, analytic, and model for social relations. This article critiques this turn by placing it in dialogue with a longer history of political organicism to draw forth a shared mode of politics that grounds itself in a perceived ‘natural’ order of things. This mode of thinking requires stable and immediate natural objects that can be directly accessed, as if they were unmediated by language and the technoscientific systems through which they are apprehended. By tracing this mode of politics, I contend that the mushroom cannot bear all that is asked of it.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies
Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Theory Culture & Society
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 57–73
- Publication date
- 1 January 2026
- Language
- EN