Queer Mycology’s Meta-Analysis: Fungi Roll Queer Studies to the Edge of Theory

Elliana Efird’s essay won the 1st Prize in the 2024 Queer Futures Prize for the undergraduate course, Introduction to Queer Studies.  This prize seeks to acknowledge and celebrate thoughtful and innovative work in queer studies inspired by classroom discussions and learning.

The Edinburgh University Fungi Society planted a deep yearning to learn from fungal beings within me and countless others. The space animated by the human-fungus, human-human, and fungus-fungus relationships which multiply each foray, workshop, or art exhibition always not only looked but felt queer in a few senses: anti-institutional, radical, de-hierarchizing. Upon pursuing the theoretical and practical linkages between queerness and this mycological community, it occurred to me that I had observed and first-hand experienced the way which fungi, as agents, actively queer human ways of thinking and being in the world. 

Ecofeminist scholars such as Anna Tsing and Robin Wall Kimmerer became guides in my investigation of fungi’s processual defying and decaying a heteropatriarchal, hegemonic understructure of academia. Within this growing neighborhood of eco-feminist, more-than-human thought at the nexus of the natural and social sciences, I encountered a piece entitled “Mycology as a Queer Discipline” by queer mycologist Patricia Kaishian and feminist educator Hasmik Djoulakian (2020). Therewithin lay the critical intersection of mycology, the bio-and-ecological study of fungi, and queer studies. The meditative essay sung with examples of fungi defying the heteropatriarchal structures of biological studies, namely the male/female sex binary and a homogenized heterosexual reproduction model. The writing was rich with comparisons of the marginalization of fungi in scientific studies and the public imaginary to that of queer humans (i.e. bridging queerphobia and mycophobia as sociopolitical phenomenon).

However, after reading and re-reading this paper midway through my latest Queer Studies course, I decided that it, too, necessitated critical examination, as fungal research and multispecies theorizing have grown immensely even in the four years since its publication. Thus, I authored a critique, to serve as queer mycology’s 2024 meta-analysis, guided by the following problematizations: (1) the hyper-corporeal reduction of fungi to its reproductive form, (2) the agency of fungi in academic rhetoric and imagination, and (3) epistemic boundaries between disciplines within Western theories and those outside of academia. 

Queer mycological texts have a tendency to rely on a certain aspect of fungal biology to prove or support the statement that fungi are queer beings: their reproductive bodies. For example, the Schizophyllum species of fungus is commonly featured for its tens of thousands of different sexes or mating types (Kaishian and Djoulakian, 2020; Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson, 2010). This trend flagged my attention, as I felt the hyper-corporealized depiction of fungal life, especially the small portion of those which fruit/reproduce above-ground, contradicted the ethos of queer studies. Sex and mating methods, here, become synonymous with queerness, which is an exact method of thought which has been biopolitically weaponized to marginalize queer humans, past and present. I explore the politics of representation in the HIV/AIDS epidemic which equated gay sex and bodies to disease in the “story of a metaphor” (Black, 1986; cited in Treichler, 1987), arguing that queer mycology must not engage with a similar trope in reducing fungal life and queerness to sex and reproduction.

I touch on Bruno Latour’s theory of “translation” in setting up a critique of anthropocentric language structures which create gaps between our representations of those we observe and their essence (1999). We will never be able to claim to “know” fungi, not just because they mostly live subterranean lives, but because all our methods of “knowing” involve such gaps in translation, be it “S”cientifically or queer-theoretically. Thus, supposing that one field relies upon another for knowing fungi forgets inherent gaps, as well as decenters fungi from the conversation, reducing them to the role of passive theoretical commodity to be cordoned off in the tradition of Western reductionism (McCoy, 2016, cited in Maxwell, 2020). As such, queer theory can denaturalize in order to naturalize, leading to its own marginalizations and binaries despite its emphasis on critical thinking and exploding norms, and queer mycology must be wary of this in relation to reducing fungi to a theoretical commodity or political symbol. 

This begs the question: “How does one theorize queerly with fungi?”. I believe we must allow them to queer us and our methods, rotting what no longer serves us. Part of this is process is rotting the hierarchy of epistemologies in academia which privilege Western thought above all other modes of knowing, as proposed by Kaishian and Djoulakian (2020). Ethnomycology is a window into the possibility of a more-than-theory queer mycology, as it examines relations with fungi that are formed outside of or before the colonial introduction of gender, heteropatriarchy, and species exceptionalism and works to conserve Indigenous wisdoms and threatened land. Knowing can be equally intuitional and logical, written and spoken, meditation and action. Fungi are already defying our academic speculations, so queer mycology would do best by letting itself and its own process of theorizing be queered by fungi and the pluriverse.  

 Author bio:

When she wrote this essay, Elli was a second year Social Anthropology student at Edinburgh. This work changed her way of being in the woods with the surrounding Scottish funga and stimulated an interest in ethnomycology, as well as the broader bridges between the social and natural sciences—which she intends to pursue in her research during a current year abroad in Santiago, Chile.

References:

Kaishian, P. & Djoulakian, H. (2020) The Science Underground: Mycology as a Queer Discipline. Catalyst (San Diego, Calif.). [Online] 6 (2).

Latour, B. (1999) Circulating Reference: sampling soil in the Amazon Forest. In: Pandora’s hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass.; London, Harvard University Press. 24–79.

Maxwell, A. (2020) On Witches, Shrooms, and Sourdough: A Critical Reimagining of the White Settler Relationship to Land. Journal of international women’s studies. 21 (7), 8–22.

Mortimer-Sandilands, C. & Erickson, B. (2010) Queer ecologies : sex, nature, politics, desire / edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press.

Treichler, P. (1987) ‘AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification’, Cultural Studies 1(3), 263-305.