MIT PILZEN DENKEN: FUNGALE ÄSTHETIKEN DES POSTHUMANEN IN THEORIE, KUNST, LITERATUR UND FILM
THINKING WITH MUSHROOMS: FUNGAL POSTHUMANIST AESTHETICS IN THEORY, ART, LITERATURE AND FILM

Summary/Abstract: Mushrooms are trending: contemporary cultural theory and philosophy as well as the arts, literature and film sprout the fungal; a figure of thought which seems to be particularly useful to meet the challenges of our Anthropocene present. This contribution traces how and to which intend this figure of thought is used within the frame of New Materialist and Posthumanist thinking, as well as in Merlin Sheldrakes popular science book Entangled Life. It reflects on what this figure of thought can contribute to discourses around posthuman subjectivity and aesthetics. This paper then turns to examples of how a fungally inspired aisthesis is employed as a Posthumanist aesthetics in texts (by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Thomas Melle, Peter Handke, Richard Powers and Martin MacInnes), in a video installation and in the horror film In the Earth. The epistemic, aesthetic and poetological reflections of the fungal at the end of the anthropocene is concludingly discussed as a ‘becoming fungal’, as not only delivering new perspectives on humanity’s role in collaborative, processual ecologies, but also as the beginning of the new understanding of epistemic processes, cognitive phenomena and posthuman entanglement which will not leave human self-esteem untouched.

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