Mycotransformations
Encountering Fungi in Assemblages of Modernity
Salome Rodeck ---
Thesis – rMA Cultural Analysis Dr. Timothy Yaczo
Dr. Jeff Diamanti June 13, 2018
Contents
Introduction 2
Chapter 1 Dying with ‘Infinity Mushrooms’ 9
1.1. Toxic Matters: Embalming Practices and Green Burial 12 1.2. Toxic Assemblages: Trans-Corporality in Anthropocene Landscapes 16
1.3. Contaminated by Fungi: Mycoremediation and Healing 20
Chapter 2 Experiencing Psilocybin 27
2.1. Ingesting Psilocybin: Enhanced Relationality and the Wildness of Hallucinogens 30
2.2. Psilocybin in Relation: Enactment and Measurement 34
2.3. In Hopes of Social Transformation: The Politics of Psychedelic Research 42
Chapter 3 Playing with Reishi 51
3.1. Beyond Control: Rethinking Domestication and Playing in Co-Presence 53 3.2. Art as Event-Space: Transformative Encounters in the Art Gallery 59 3.3. Futures yet-to-come: Healing (in) Capitalist Ruins? 65
Conclusion 70
Introduction
These are gateway species, vanguard species that open the door for other biological communities…
Stamets, “6 ways” 09:35–40
In a TED talk entitled “6 ways mushrooms can save the world,” Paul Stamets—sometimes called the Steve Jobs of Fungi—presents six experiments he conducted with mushrooms, or rather, fungi, as mushrooms are only the fruiting body visible on the surface, whereas most of the organism grows in a dense web of filaments, called mycelium, permeating almost every inch of soil. One experiment shows how oyster fungi transformed a pile of dirt, contaminated with petroleum waste, into a “green berm of life” (09:33–34) in just a couple of weeks. Stamets discusses the astonishingly high antiviral and antibacterial activities of certain types of fungi, and presents his patents on fungi as natural pesticides and forecasts the use of fungi for the
production of sustainable fuel. He ends his talk with the words: “These are species we need to join with. I think engaging mycelium can help save the world” (17:21–28). In that moment, something in me changed, and I cannot explain my feeling of gratification, when, months later I started reading Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, in which she describes the “mushroom fever” (viii) she has been experiencing. I started watching other lectures by Stamets, read Eugenia Bone’s autobiographic journey Mycophilia and when autumn arrived, I started noticing and photographing mushrooms that where popping up all around my neighborhood.1 I could not help but wonder what had happened to me. I never really thought
about fungi before, I could barely tell apart the different sorts in the supermarket. And here I was, dreaming up a fungi-revolution that could fix all of the problems of our warming and polluted planet.
1
In mycology, the term mycotransformation designates the ability of fungi to degrade and transform organic and inorganic compounds. Often overlooked even in biology, fungi play a crucial part in the biogeochemial cycling of elements, meaning the crossing of boundaries between the living and the nonliving, the organic and the nonorganic (McCoy xvi, Gadd 60). They contribute to over 90 percent of all natural decomposition of earthly matter, thereby creating and improving soil quality (McCoy 1). In other words, fungi are masters of
transformation, a quality that renders them so interesting for a multitude of scientific disciplines. During my research, I have found a surprising number of projects involving fungi both for environmental remediation and the improvement of human health. It seems like we may indeed stand at the brink of a fungi-revolution. Engineers are working hard to substitute carbon-based products with fungal alternatives and pharmacologists seem to discover new antibacterial fungal metabolites every day. 2 Myco-engineer Maurizio Montalti, who grows a large variety of
mycelium objects, proclaims that “the next revolution is the biotechnological revolution” (“Growing” 02:38–41). But the term “biotechnology” not only evokes positive emotions. Many scholars have expressed a concern about the effects of ‘tinkering’ with living organisms (see Twine, Rose for example). This leads me to wonder what kind of revolution fungi can spark. Or, to scale this question down, throughout this thesis I will seek out answers to the question of what kind of transformations can happen when humans encounter and think with fungi.
Tsing’s writing has done groundbreaking work in establishing a link between fungi and the humanities. In her philosophico-ethnographic study, Tsing follows matsutake, a gourmet mushroom, as it is picked by refugee communities in the forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and shipped to Japan. Her writing paints an intricate picture of the intertwinement of the precarious state of the planet and the precarity of humans: “lost livelihoods and damaged
2
Apart from the projects discussed here, fungi are being tested or already implemented for the creation of solar panels, leather, Styrofoam, food and tableware, to only name a few. Some interesting projects are summarized in the video “You Didn’t Know Mushrooms Could Do All This,” produced by National Geographic (Nat.
landscapes” (18). Precarity, according to Tsing, is the “condition of our time” (Mushroom 20). She writes, “Matsutake’s willingness to emerge in blasted landscapes allows us to explore the ruin that has become our collective home” (3). Matsutake are more than commodities, in her account. Tsing thinks with fungi and highlights their qualities which render them so
predestinated to ‘save the world,’ or as she rewords it more humbly: “If we open ourselves to their fungal attractions, matsutake can catapult us into the curiosity that seems to me the first requirement of collaborative survival in precarious times” (2).
Fungi have always played a crucial role in the formation of creating habitable conditions for others. In the opening quote, Stamets calls them gateway species that allow for other
biological communities to follow. Plants followed fungi because they “made soil by digesting rocks” (Tsing 22, see Stamets, “Six” 05:18–25). By making “living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others” (Tsing 22), fungi participate in “multispecies world making.” These “world-making projects” are not limited to Nature, figured as a realm opposed to the cultural space of humans.3 On the contrary, thinking with fungi highlights the inadequacy of the
Nature/Culture binary. Richard Doyle writes,
Across the life and climate sciences, the news is this: You are deeply implicated in the global ecosystem in ways scientific and technical prates are only beginning to
comprehend and model. If the breakthroughs in medical and global imagining systems have provided us with revelations, they reveal that our separateness from ecosystems is itself an illusion, and that we are membranes inseparable from a global ecology. (7) Humans are not separate from Nature but instead, deeply intertwined with ecological assemblages. Mostly unknowingly, humans depend to a large extent on the world-making
3
Throughout this thesis I use the capitalized Nature whenever I refer to the concept of an ahistorical realm, outside of human culture, and inhabited by ‘Natural’ organisms. For further information on the critique of Nature, see for example Morton, Ecology and Latour, Politics.
projects of fungi, which, by transforming chemicals, create “room for more than one species” (Tsing 22).
A precondition for survival is adaptability, the ability to change in the encounter with others. “[S]taying alive—for every species— requires livable collaborations. Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaborations, we all die” (28), Tsing writes. Again, fungi help to see this: Biologists assume that around eighty percent of all plants live in a symbiotic relationship with a fungus, which assists in the nutrient uptake of the roots and receives carbohydrates in return (Gadd 60). In the process of encountering, both partners change. Matsutake smell differently, Tsing reports, according to the tree they are connected with (51). But encountering fungi also changes human minds. Fungal ‘livelihoods’ are quite different to those of humans and have shown me the confines of my thinking, about such a variety of things as my own body, death, consciousness, architecture. Tsing notes that many fungi are “potentially immortal” (47), they can move their entire body mass through the eye of a needle. Some can change their sex, others simply fuse together with many partners at the same time, still others reproduce asexually (Arevalo 398). Humans of modern, post-Enlightenment societies think through the notion of “the self-containment individual actor” (Tsing 28). We assume our bodies and minds to be relatively stable over time, until we die, which constitutes the end of the linear story of Life. “Self-contained individuals,” Tsing argues, “are not transformed by encounter. Maximizing their interest, they use encounters–but remain unchanged in them.” The indeterminacy of fungi, on the other hand “expands our concept of human life,” Tsing argues, “showing us how we are transformed by encounter. Humans and fungi share such here-and-now transformations through encounter” (47). Thinking through fungi opens up thinking about the transformations that happen in an encounter, both on a material and discursive level.
Tsing uses matsutake as her object of analysis, actual mushrooms situated in cycles of ecology and economy, and as a conceptual guide, thinking through fungal being to address
human problems. Whereas I follow her philosophical approach, the fungi I will look at in this thesis are of a different sort. They are not ‘wild growing’ specimen, but have already been brought into ‘assemblages of modernity,’ spatial and temporal specific yet “open-ended gatherings” (23) of “entangled ways of life (4).4 They are used by designers, researchers and
artists, because of their transformative capacities. Each chapter discusses one encounter between humans and fungi in assemblages, and each time I trace the transformations taking place when fungi are invited (or simply noticed) into Western 21st century assemblages,
composed of Enlightenment, Christian and capitalist discourses and their material crystallizations in bodies, spaces and landscapes.
In the first chapter I look at the “infinity burial project” by artist-designer Jae Rhim Lee, which promotes the decomposition of ‘toxic bodies’ with the help of fungi. Centerpiece of infinity burial is a suit, “a handcrafted garment that is worn by the deceased” (Coeio, “FAQ” n.p.). Made from organic cotton and lined with a ‘biomix’ of fungi mycelium and
microorganisms, the suit is created to substitute regular wood or steel coffins. As the mycelium forms and grows, it breaks down the body and helps transport its nutrients to surrounding plants. The fungi contribute to a ‘cleaner’ decomposition of the body as they disassemble not only human tissue but the nonhuman others that are accumulated over a lifespan: heavy metals, preservatives, pesticides. I show how the infinity burial project is situated within contemporary burial practices and environmentalist critique thereof. The project does much more work than other green burial systems: it highlights the composite and porous nature of human bodies, the fungi ‘remediate’ bodily toxicity, improve soil and connect human bodies to the nutrient cycle. With the help of Karen Barad I formulate a notion of these ‘mycotransformations’ to do even
4
I follow Haggerty and Ericson’s understanding of assemblage as comprising “discrete flows of an essentially limitless range of other phenomena such as people, signs, chemicals, knowledge and institutions. To dig beneath the surface stability of any entity is to encounter a host of different phenomena and processes working in concert” (608).
more: affording a notion of material-discursive healing not only of spatial assemblages but of the wounds of losing a loved one.
One of the mycotransformations most deeply interwoven with human history is the ritualistic (and later ‘recreational’) consumption of neuroactive mushrooms, Psilocybe. The second chapter takes a look at three psychopharmacological studies by Roland Griffiths and his team, carried out between 2006 and 2016. The first study attempts to assess if psilocybin ‘reliably’ elicits ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical-type’ experiences and in a fourteen-month follow-up, if these experiences continue to have substantial meaning for the participants. My analysis traces how psilocybin changes bodily assemblages from the inside, and how at the same time,
psilocybin is itself transformed through enactment and measurement within scientific practices. Again, Karen Barad’s theory helps me making important connections between the materiality of fungi and the discursive transformations happening in human encounters with them. In the last section, I consider in what ways Griffiths et al.’s research practices, as well as the aims of one of their main sponsors, the Heffter Research Institute, are traversed by hopes of social
transformation through the use of psychedelic drugs, which originated in the ‘Psychedelia’ counterculture of the 1960s. By distancing themselves from this heritage, however, psilocybin research produces quite adverse social changes and continue to limit the transformations possible in psilocybin-human assemblages.
In the third and final chapter, I discuss Philip Ross’s artwork Mycotectural Alpha, or the ‘teahouse,’ a vaulted structure build with ‘mycelium bricks.’ Ross has invented and patented a technique which allows him to grow fungi mycelium as densely compressed structures, which subsequently can function as a substitute for concrete or brick stones. The guiding question in this section is if it is possible to ‘use’ fungi for human ends without continuing the notion of ‘self-contained’ individuality that can ignore the need for collaboration for collective survival. Ross’s description of his work process allows me to be hopeful. With the help of Haraway’s dog stories, I think about playing as a way to open up to mycotransformations. In the second section
I suggest that Ross’s playful encounter is translated in the artwork, which consequently affords a transformation in the art gallery. Lastly, I trace how fungi—through Mycotectural Alpha—suggest healing transformations of the assemblage of human bodies, Anthropocene landscapes and capitalist modes of production.
As a whole, the three chapters elude the notion of progress, that according to Tsing not only has caused the precarious state of the earth, but has infiltrated all areas of collective imagination: “assumptions of improvement are with us everywhere” (20). Instead of telling a story with a happy ending, this thesis aligns with Tsing’s call for paying attention to the
‘patchiness’ of the world, that becomes noticeable after we abandon the hope for progress and start noticing mushrooms. Rather than presenting a piece as a “forward march,” conforming to the “driving beat” of progress, I attempt to listen to the “polyphonic assemblage” (24) that fungi and humans create. Because of their specificity—even in their multitude, fungi tend to do certain things, and not others—the same concepts reappear several times throughout the chapters. Instead of abandoning something I already touched upon, again and again, I pick these concepts up when the fungal objects seem to suggest them, trying to understand in which way each encounter with fungi afford different conceptual transformations.
Chapter 1 Dying with ‘Infinity Mushrooms’
In 2011, the online platform ted.com uploaded a video which was recorded at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. It shows MIT graduate, artist and product designer Jae Rhim Lee dressed in what she calls the infinity burial suit. Humorously acknowledging that her appearance evokes the notion of “ninja pajamas,” (00:13) Lee reveals that she designed the suit she is wearing in order to decompose a human body after death. It indeed resembles pajamas, with buttons on both the jacket and trousers for easy dressing and flaps for the face, hands and feet, that can be folded back during a public viewing (see fig. 1). It is lined with a ‘biomix’ of bacteria and the spores of several species of fungi, which are experts in the field of
decomposition. The suit is part of larger project “at the intersection of art, science, and culture” (02:26–29), which Lee refers to as the “infinity burial project, an alternative burial system that uses mushrooms to decompose and clean toxins in bodies” (02:28–37). In 2016, Lee founded Coeio, the company that promotes the project and sells the suit.
In her TED talk, Lee shows pictures of several petri dishes, filled with her hair, skin particles and nails, which she ‘fed’ to some of the most commonly known fungi, so they would learn to decompose her bodily shedding and—eventually—entire bodies.5 She calls these
mushrooms ‘infinity mushrooms,’ a hint to the idea of the incessant transformation of the material remains of bodies, which forms the cornerstone of Lee’s project and the focal point of this chapter. She explains,
As I watch the mushrooms grow and digest my body, I imagine the infinity mushroom as a symbol of a new way of thinking about death and the relationship between my body and
5
Unfortunately, despite several attempts I was unable to get in touch with Lee or other members of Coeio. Therefore, I have no certainty on the fungi species used. An image Lee uses in her presentation and which also can be found on coeio.com presumably shows Pleurotus eryngii (King oyster), Pleurotus ostraetus (Oyster mushroom), Flammulina velutipes (Enokitake) and Agaricus bisporus (Portobello mushroom), all of which have been tested to varying degrees for their mycoremediation potential. See Hamba and Tamiru, Kapahi and Sachdeva.
Fig. 1 Coeio. “Infinity Burial Suit.” Web. Retrieved from
the environment … It’s a step towards accepting the fact that some day I will die and decay. It is also a step towards taking responsibility for my own burden on the planet. (03:53– 04:25)
“For some of you, this may be really really out there,” she tells the laughing audience, “we want to eat, not be eaten by our food, right?” (Lee 03:36–53). The notion of a human-eating
mushroom might indeed be unsettling to many. The activities and lives of fungi are not the center of attention in contemporary popular culture, and neither is the material reality of dying and decaying. The encounter between human bodies and fungi opens up space for thinking about the intertwinement of fungal activities and their relevancy for human lives. The infinity burial project inspires an interrogation of modern burial traditions in the light of more recent cultural shifts that have been reformulating our ethical and conceptual relationship with the material world and human enmeshment within it. Infinity burial exposes that in a world
conceptualized as ‘Anthropocene,’ in which human activities have been transforming every part of the biosphere, burial practices have become political and ethical activities in new and
unforeseen ways. Dying with infinity mushrooms reflects the kind of responsibilities we are willing to take in order to mitigate the changes of the material world caused by greenhouse gas emission, toxic waste and the spread of (micro-) plastics, to name just a few.
The chapter is divided into three parts. First, by situating the infinity burial project within the context of funeral practices in the United States, I highlight that Lee’s project has to be understood as emerging from the specific material-discursive assemblage that burial traditions in North America constitute. In the second section, I discuss the ways in which the infinity burial project challenges concepts of the body and draws attention to the embodied responsibility that living in assemblages of modernity entails. Lastly, beginning with an explanation of
mycoremediation as a form of oddkin collaboration, I discuss in what ways the infinity burial suit can be understood as an ‘embodied concept’ that proffers material-discursive changes not only of burial practices, but an ontological understanding of the interconnectedness of matter,
which allows for different forms of healing. The collaboration with fungi in this process highlights the ethical call for selecting companions that help earthly communities thrive in attempts of collaborative survival.
1.1. Toxic Matters: Embalming Practices and Green Burial
In order to understand how the infinity burial project questions not only Western funeral practices but the way we think about death and its relation to the world, it needs to be situated within a larger cultural context. In the preface to his book Rest in Peace, Gary Laderman writes,
[t]he chaos of death disturbs the peace of the living. Nothing represents this chaos more forcefully to human senses and the imagination than the biological process of bodily disintegration. This unsettling fact of life has proven to be a rich source of inspiration for human efforts to find order in disorder, meaning in suffering, eternity in finitude.
Religion, culture, social structures, the vitality of these rudimentary elements of communal life depends upon ritually putting the dead body in its place, managing the relations between the living and the dead, and providing explanations for the existence of death. Throughout human history the problem of bodily decay has had to be solved in a meaningful way—the social body cannot function without agreed upon principles to respond to the universal presence of dead bodies. (xv)
Even though burial practices are specifically related to particular cultures in particular times, dealing with dead bodies, Laderman’s argument highlights, is a universal part of human life, a need to make sense of the absence of life but also a necessity to protect the living from decaying remains.
The contemporary variant of dealing with the dead, referred to as ‘corpse disposal,’ in the United States, is largely shaped by practices emerging after the Civil War (Laderman 6).
The necessity to send home large amounts of dead soldiers gave rise to an elaborate and invasive embalming process, which remains the standard to this day. Extensive embalming is a rather novel process in the history of funeral practices. Even though burial rituals have been a part of humanity from very early on, for most of human history, corpses where simply washed and dressed (Coleman 158). One of the few famous exceptions is the mummification in Ancient Egypt, which consequently has been used as point of reference for emerging
embalming practices, in order to render “the appearance of embalming on the American scene seem meaningful, and perfectly natural, to the nascent industry” (Laderman 10). In
combination with other social changes, such as smaller homes and a consequent disappearance of domestic facilites for deathwatches and funerals, as well as the rise of hospitals as primary institutions of fighting, monitoring, and finally, storing of death, embalming practices
contributed to the increasing “displacement of the dead from the everyday social worlds of the living” (4). In the 21st century, decaying bodies have virtually disappeared from cultural landscapes.
What is presented during an open casket viewing is the result of an extensive manipulation, designed to hide signs of decay. During the embalming process, the body is drained of blood and other fluids which consequently are substituted with embalming fluid, consisting mostly of formaldehyde and alcohol (Coleman 74). This process slows down decomposition and preserves the body for the time of an open casket viewing. In addition to the actual embalming process, cosmetic processes include “disinfecting the corpse, securing the eyes and mouth in a closed position, and putting tight-fitting plastic clothing on the body to contain any leaking embalming fluid and undrained body fluid” (Coleman 74). Apart from that, the body undergoes a ‘beautifying procedure’ so that “it resembles as closely as possible the appearance of the person who has died.” The corpse is then placed in a hardwood or metal casket, sometimes sealed with a thin rubber strip to provide “superior ‘protection’” (Harris 35). Especially in the United States, caskets are often placed in a metal or concrete vault, to ensure
even more ‘protection from’ the elements. A huge material and financial effort is made to uphold this type of embalming and funeral ceremonies with open casket viewing and opulent floral arrangements, which is, according to Laderman, “a fundamental component of the American way of death” (xxxvi). Some Americans, Penny Coleman writes, believe that
meticulous embalming and insulation measurements can stop the decaying process altogether, a myth that costs family members a lot of extra money (63, see also Harris 35). It comes as no surprise that American funerals can amount up to ten thousand dollars (10). Consequently, the American funeral business is lucrative, with revenues adding up to thirteen billion dollars a year (Harrington and Krysinski 199). A lot of this money and effort is invested in rendering the deceased looking as if simply in a state of “serene sleep” (Laderman xxxv)—and thus are payed to hide the material reality of death.
Modern embalming methods and corpse disposal have come under scrutiny from environmentalist activists and scientists. They have expressed concern about the environmental toxins that are pumped into corpses and consequently put in the soil, often in close vicinity to urban communities. One of the main points of critique is the use of formaldehyde which is classified as a known carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer since 2004 (Chiappelli and Chiappelli 25). In addition, more than forty other federally controlled toxins are regularly used in the embalming process (Iserson 211). Despite the efforts of keeping the body away from the soil, the 15-year warranty on many caskets is telling. Eventually, the bodily remains and toxic substances may leak into the ground. Thus, many cemeteries regularly receive biocide applications, which add to the increasing contamination of the cemetery
grounds (Stowe et al. 1817). The ecological concerns about cremation, among the most popular options for corpse disposal because of lower costs and less material waste, are not less alarming. Cremation consumes considerable amounts of energy and releases carbon dioxide, mercury, and dioxin among other air pollutants, which are both problematic for residents and, due to their bioaccumulative characteristic, for the biosphere at large (Mari and Domingo 131). In the
days of climate change and mass extinction discourses, funeral practices suddenly have become enmeshed in larger questions of ecologically responsible citizenship.
The infinity burial project, as a part of a larger eco- or green burial movement, responds to these worries concerning modern burial practices. Green burial usually designates leaving the body in its natural state, eschewing the use of toxins and hardwood caskets, and instead the promotion of light and biodegradable materials, such as wicker or bamboo caskets or a simple shroud. In addition, a less intrusive way of embedding the grave into a natural landscape is often practiced. On green burial sites—often simple meadows or woodlands—no vaults are used and efforts of leaving the natural flora intact are being made (Hockey et al. 117). Similarly, the infinity burial suit is advertised as being “made of all natural, biodegradable material,” using “no harsh chemicals, preservatives, or processing” and as “reunit[ing] the body with the earth and the ongoing cycle of life” (Coeio). In addition, embalming and the use of a steel casket or vault are discouraged as both would be detrimental to the proliferation of the organisms found in the ‘biomix.’ With their “patent-pending technology,” Coeio promises to “reduce … environmental impact” and funeral costs.
While green burial methods challenge contemporary practices due to environmental concerns, they are complicit in the general avoidance of talking about bodily decomposition and the specificities of decay. On their website, the Green Burial Council states that “natural burial is a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact that aids in the conservation of natural resources, reduction of carbon emissions, protection of worker health, and the restoration and/or preservation of habitat” (Green Burial Council). Here, the
decomposition process is not mentioned at all. Similarly, Green Burials, a retailer for alternative burial products, circumvents an apt description of the process by using ‘recycling’ instead of ‘decomposing’, when talking about the body, a wording that omits the messiness of decaying processes. Consequently, while green burial slowly changes discourses on funeral practices and
the toxins being used in order to keep the deceased in a state of lifelikeness, its critique is quite literally only ‘skin-deep.’
The discussion of contemporary embalming practices and the critique by
environmentalism presented here serves as an important background to the material and conceptual reworkings that the infinity burial project offers. In the following section, these interrogations are elaborated. Whereas the critique of green burial is limited to corpse disposal to contemporary burial practices—the material waste as well as the use of toxins—infinity burial offers a material-discursive revision of the ontological status of dead bodies by drawing attention to toxic lifestyles, decaying processes, the importance of ecological embeddedness and the prospects of ‘oddkin’ collaborations. By working with fungi, the infinity burial project not only questions embalming methods but the Western relationship to corpses more generally. In addition to that, it sheds light on the possibility of collaborating with nonhuman others in order to render visible and possibly improve the entanglements of humans with worldly ecologies.
1.2. Toxic Assemblages: Trans-Corporality in Anthropocene Landscapes
The absence of public discourses and visibility of decaying aligns with a wider denial of the biological—and messy—nature of (human) bodies. Mostly presented as a canvas for human identity, bodies are shaped and formed through various performative practices. The material composite structures of bodies, which are always already more than ‘human,’ and
fundamentally open to the world, is generally ignored. By drawing attention to the
decomposition of bodily remains, Lee’s project questions the cultural taboo of speaking about the ‘messiness’ of human bodies, reflected in North American funeral practices. In her TED talk she explains that the infinity burial project is embedded in a larger project of cultural activism called “decompiculture.” “Decompinauts,” according to Lee, share a “common desire to understand and accept death and to minimize the impact of our death on the environment”
(06:05–15). With her project, Lee “wanted to cultivate this perspective, just like the mushrooms” (06:15–18). She says,
The decompiculture society shares a vision of a cultural shift: From our current culture of death denial and body preservation to one of decompiculture, a radical acceptance of death and decomposition. Accepting death means accepting that we are physical beings who are intimately connected to the environment (06:32–51).
The ‘decompiculture society’ highlights that human bodies cannot be separated from the biogeochemical cycles that fungi are involved in and highlights the cultural work such a reconceptualization can perform. Drawing attention to the different processes of corporeal death, Lee’s presentation of the infinity burial project not only challenges cultural taboos but interrogates our understanding of our own bodies.
Decomposing means separating or breaking something down into its components. Talking about this process in the context of human bodies inevitably draws attention to their composite nature. They consist of a
multitude of microbial cells – bacteria, archaea, and fungi – without which the whole would be seriously dysfunctional and ultimately non-viable. … In fact, about 90 per cent of the cells that make up the human body belong to such microbial symbionts and, owing to their great diversity, they contribute something like 99 per cent of the genes in the human body. (Dupré 125)
Drawing on this knowledge, Jane Bennett suggests an understanding of bodies as assemblages. Situating her writing in dialogue with political theory, she uses the concept of assemblages to disturb classic notions of agency, which “becomes distributed across an ontologically
heterogeneous field, rather than being a capacity localized in a human body or in a collective produced (only) by human efforts” (23). Looking at the nonhuman others within the body, Bennett writes,
One can note that the human immune system depends on parasitic helminth worms for its proper functioning or cite other instances of our cyborgization to show how human agency is always an assemblage of microbes, animals, plants, metals, chemicals, word-sounds and the like—indeed, that insofar as anything ‘acts’ at all, it has already entered an agentic assemblage. (120–1)
Having a body means living-with, sharing one’s being and becoming with myriads of others. This understanding challenges naturalized concepts of the body as a closed and sacred unity reflected in modern burial practices.
Thinking bodies as assemblages not only highlights the multiplicity of corporeal being, but consequently also points to its open-endedness. Nancy Tuana therefore talks about a
viscous porosity of the body, “This porosity is a hinge through which we are of and in the world. I refer to it as viscous for there are membranes that effect the interactions. These membranes are of various types—skin and flesh, prejudgments and symbolic imaginaries, habits and embodiments” (199–200). Similarly, Stacy Alaimo’s concept of ‘trans-corporality’ emphasizes “the movement across bodies” and “reveals the interchanges and interconnections between various bodily natures” (2). Embodied existence means participating in the flux of worldly matter in open-ended assemblages.
Bodily open-endedness in inseparable from corporeal vulnerability. Humans die because their skin and organs are injured, but also because they breathe in deadly viruses and bacteria. Harald Fromm writes, “the ‘environment,’ as we now apprehend it, runs right through us in endless waves” (qtd. in Alaimo 11) But with the proliferation of industrial manufacturing, followed by a steady increase of substances designed to manipulate and control Nature, human and nonhuman bodily existence has become increasingly precarious. On a planet full of
plastics, Nancy Tuana argues, the quality of bodies to be open to the world and thus, letting the world inside has become a health risk. PVC and phthalates, she writes, can enter the body and act as endocrine disrupters. “Plastic becomes flesh” (201). Bodily assemblages in the
Anthropocene—or Plasticene, as T.J. Demos suggests (Against 94)—are joined and transformed by an ever-increasing amount of natureculture substances, molecules of plastics, heavy metals, pesticides and dioxins.
The infinity burial project addresses the viscous porosity of the body and challenges a still prevalent ignorance of corporeal changes resulting from living in a polluted world. In her TED talk, Lee claims that we carry more than two hundred different toxic chemicals,
accumulated over a lifetime, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the largest national public health institute of the United States (Lee 00:49–01:02). Lee says,
to me, this says three things: first, don’t become a cannibal; second, we are both responsible and the victims of our own pollution, and third, our bodies are filters and store houses for environmental toxins. So, what happens to all these toxins when we die? The short answer is, they return to the environment in one way or another, continuing the cycle of toxicity. (01:02–32)
Lee’s way of describing human bodies is unsettling. Instead of talking about the dignified remains of a beloved one, she stresses the trans-corporality of bodies, which has rendered them “dangerous hazardous waste,” a fact that, as Alaimo argues, “many people already know but either cynically accept or try to deny—that all that scary stuff, supposedly out there, is already within” (Alaimo 18). As Lee’s statement makes clear, there is no getting away from toxicity, even after death. The consequences of accumulating environmental toxins, Alaimo stresses, is a “particularly potent example of trans-corporeal space, in which the human body can never be disentangled from the material world, a world composed of emergent, entangled biological creatures as well as a multitude of xenobiotic, humanly made substances” (24). Inextricably entangled with the world, bodies become part of the toxic assemblage that the planet has become.
By pointing to the toxicity of contemporary capitalist bodies, the infinity burial project makes clear that funeral styles are more than simply aesthetic choices, and have become
political and ethical decisions in the light of the environmental crisis. “What was once the ostensibly bounded human subject,” Alaimo emphasizes, “finds herself in a swirling landscape of uncertainty where practices and actions that were once not even remotely ethical or political matters suddenly become the very stuff of the crises at hand” (20). A change of our
understanding of human bodies as being infused with the ‘stuff’ of the Anthropocene
significantly shifts the meaning of the question of what legacy we want to leave behind. From an ecological perspective, after a life of littering the planet with plastic, too much greenhouse gas emission and unethical consumption, do we want to continue harming ecologies even after death?
The infinity burial project, this section has shown, sheds light on the ignorance and denial of bodily existence prevalent in the West and reflected in contemporary burial practices. Thinking with infinity mushrooms facilitates an understanding of the body as an open-ended assemblage that is subject to changes in the environment. By drawing attention to the toxicity of Anthropocene corpses, it has become clear that funerals are more than aesthetic choices but are enmeshed within wider ethical and political decisions concerning our responsibility to the world. In the following section, I discuss how mycoremediation as a form of ‘oddkin’
collaboration facilitates meaningful material and conceptual transformation of dead bodies. I highlight how the infinity burial suit, understood as an ‘embodied concept’ not only changes bodily matter and earthly soil, but also offers other ways of mourning by anchoring the loss of loved ones within the material becoming of the world.
1.3. Contaminated by Fungi: Mycoremediation and Healing
The infinity burial project draws on an expanding field of knowledge in the environmental sciences about the abilities of some plants, bacteria, and fungi to eliminate and bind toxins from the soil and water. This process is called bioremediation, or in the case of fungi,
successfully been tested to reduce petroleum on the surface of water after oil spills (Singh 120), Resinicium bicolor was shown to effectively detoxify waste rubber material (Bredberg et al. 221) and Glomus intraradices, a mycorrhizal fungus, may contribute to uranium immobilization (Rufykiri et al. 391). In the case of the infinity burial project, the selected fungi species
transform heavy metals and other toxic substances, while growing inside and around the bodily assemblage in a mycelial web.
Mycoremediation exemplifies a slow paradigmatic shift in the way the sciences and public culture think about human relations with the earth. In general, Western societies assume a substantial difference between culture and nature, and a division of humans and nonhumans into the respective spheres. The Nature/Culture binary is deeply entrenched in Western practices. Whereas capitalism continues to extract ‘natural resources’ from Nature in order to fulfill global markets, all the while approving “devastation of natural landscapes” (Tsing,
Mushroom 20), Western environmentalism, still adhering to the same binary, tries “to preserve areas of wilderness or ‘outstanding natural beauty’” (Morton, Ecology 9). Bioremediation on the other hand develops from a growing understanding of human enmeshment in ecological
processes and a coming to grips with the finitude of the planet. In Hyperobjects, Morton writes that such an understanding of the world “presents us with viscous surfaces from which nothing can forcibly be peeled. There is no Away on this surface, no here and no there” (31). Instead of destroying most and preserving some landscapes, bioremediation acknowledges that
‘manipulation’ is an inevitable part of existence and the important question is not if we should interfere, but how we should interfere. As a result, bioremediation contributes to a larger paradigmatic shift that promotes an active engagement with ecologies, understood not as a realm separate from humans, but as heterogeneous assemblages of human and nonhuman coexistence.
By ignoring worldly entanglements, modern humans have littered the planet, including their own bodies. In her presentation, Lee claims, “once we understand that we are connected
to the environment, we see that the survival of our species depends on the survival of the planet. I believe this is the beginning of true environmental responsibility” (06:58–07:12). The infinity burial project thus resonates with what Tsing calls ‘collaborative survival.’ She writes,
“interspecies entanglements that once seemed the stuff of fables are now materials for serious discussion among biologists and ecologists, who show how life requires the interplay of many kinds of beings. Humans cannot survive by stomping on all the others” (Mushroom vii). Mycoremediation is an active engagement with multi-species interplay. It draws attention to the necessity to work with others, to get humans (and again, others) out of the “precarious
livelihoods” (4) we find ourselves within. “Precarity,” Tsing argues, is a state of
acknowledgement of our vulnerability to others. In order to survive, we need help, and help is always the service of another, with or without intent” (29). Mycoremediation represents an acknowledgment that the best way to mitigate some of the damages to the planet is to collaborate with fungi, vital organisms for the thriving of ecologies.
Fungi are excellent at collaborating with others, creating ever expanding ‘polyphonic assemblages.’ While the subterranean mycelium grows and expands, it forms symbiotic relationships with trees and plants in the area. Ecologists Beiler et al. claim that forests are connected by a vast network of interwoven mycelia and roots, forming a “wood-wide web” of mycelial highways (543). These interconnections are more than just a facilitation of nutrient uptake, but might constitute the precondition for forest ecosystems to form and survive. Haraway writes, “we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become-with each other or not at all” (Species 4). Drawing on Tsing, she proposes the term ‘oddkin’ in order to describe the need for working across difference. Fungi’s very existence entails the making of oddkin. Some form cell-deep symbiosis with plant roots, others completely fuse with algae.6 By aligning ourselves with this kingdom of symbiosis, we get
6 The word symbiosis was first used in biology to describe the mutualistic relationships of algae and fungi forming
a chance of choosing oddkin for collaborative survival, or what Alaimo calls, “queer, green, ethical” family-making (12). The company Coeio acknowledges that coming together is a core feature of the infinity burial project. The name is based on the latin word coeo, meaning ‘to assemble, or come together’ (Coeio “FAQs”).
The infinity burial suit uses the technology of mycoremediation to include corpses into this family-making and by doing so, challenges the negative affects associated with decay. In her TED talk, Lee repeatedly stresses that fungi clean bodies and soils from toxins and, as stated on Coeio’s website, “improve the soil, and enrich plant life” rendering the ground healthier than before the burial (Coeio). With infinity mushrooms, decay becomes an act of ‘purification’ that contrasts with common notions of decomposition as messy. By comparison, then, contemporary funeral practices are those becoming repulsive, especially when we learn that due to over-insulation of corpses, they can putrefy, turning into a toxic, foul-smelling mass that eventually seeps into the ground (Harris 35). In this context, the idea of protecting bodies ‘from the elements’ becomes absurd and perverse. The naturalized idea that contemporary burial is a hygienic and safe practice is unsettled when compared to mycoremediation.
In the light of toxic assemblages, ‘cleaning’ soils and bodies becomes an ethical task. Being buried in a suit infused with fungi and bacteria assist in ‘collaborative survival,’ even though this might sound paradoxical to readers conditioned to understand life as the story of a “self-contained actor” (Tsing 28). But transformation is an inevitable part of existence that Tsing calls contamination. “We are contaminated by our encounters”, Tsing writes, “they change who we are as we make way for others. As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds—and new directions—may emerge. Everyone carries a history of contamination; purity is not an option” (Mushroom 2). In conversation with the infinity burial project, however, it becomes clear that not all contaminations are benign. Humans hope to keep the body pure by encapsulating it in coffins and vaults. But the toxicity of modern bodily assemblages exposes such attempts as naïve denial. The ‘contaminating encounters’ with infinity mushrooms on the
other hand, help making a “commitment to living and dying with response-ability in unexpected company” (Haraway, Staying 38). If purity is not an option, then infinity mushrooms highlight that in the light of the Anthropocene, it is especially important to choose what kind of
contaminations we should promote. Actively choosing to be contaminated by fungi after one’s death is a way of supporting ‘world-making projects’ of benign critters. Becoming fertile soil, disassembled human bodies travel through the nutrient cycle. They become food for plants becoming food for insects becoming food for birds and so on. Instead of being kept apart from the world, bodies buried in the suit are recognized as a part of it. Dying with fungi means
supporting the entanglements of collaborative survival. Returning one’s body as a food source to those species that create vital habitats for humans means acknowledging that ‘leaving behind a legacy’ in the Anthropocene must include supporting the species necessary for (collaborative) survival of humans and nonhumans.
Encountering others not only changes material worlds, but transforms ideas as well. Drawing on quantum physicist Niels Bohr, Karen Barad argues that concepts are not immaterial ideas, but “specific physical arrangements” (“Posthumanist” 814, italics i.O.), designed to create a meaningful ‘snapshot,’ carved out of the inseparability of matter and meaning. Concepts do not precede material phenomena, but come into being only through the intra-activity—the mutual interference—of both. I will discuss Barad’s notion of agential realism further in chapter two. For now, it suffices to note that such an understanding of the
relationship between concepts and matter represents a profound reworking of the relationship between “ontic and semantic” (Meeting 148) parts of the world. In this context, the infinity burial project can be understood as being born out of a changing understanding of the body and human impacts on the planet, as discussed in section two. It embodies our changing concepts of how the world is (from Nature/Culture dualism to ecological interconnectedness, for instance). But at the same time, as a ‘specific physical arrangement,’ it is not only a material answer to changing discourses, but an embodied concept that affects how we see the world.
Mycotransformed bodies render tangible the entanglements of being and therefore suggests a certain meaningfulness of existing that is not prevalent in Western discourses on death
otherwise. The idea of being eaten by fungi and bacteria might be disturbing to many, but at the same time, it can be a comforting thought that one’s body travels through the nutrient circle, becomes plant food and continues to be disassembled in ever smaller fragments.
“If we end the story with decay,” Tsing writes, “we abandon all hope” (Mushroom 18, italics i. O.). Infinity burial emphasizes the material inseparability of human bodies from the rest of the world and therefore can impact the ontological status we ascribe to it. If someone buries a relative in the infinity burial suit under a tree in her garden, the conceptual status of that tree might change with its material alteration through the growing mycelia. Most likely, it receives miniscule pieces of human tissue through its benign collaboration with the fungi in the suit. As a consequence, the tree becomes tangible as an assemblage of many components, and just as with humans, these components are both human and nonhuman. Instead of seeing the world as a conglomeration of stable ‘natural objects,’ thinking with the transformative power of fungi enables an understanding of existing as being boundless. Decomposing, the material disassembly of one’s body, is an inevitable transformation inherent within corporeal existence. New material structures are built out of the ‘stuff we are made of.’ To me, this is a reassuring thought. On the one hand, dying with infinity mushrooms is as close to ‘immortality’ as my secular mind can open up to, as it emphasizes the incessant journey of my bodily matter through the biogeochemical cycles of the world. On the other, standing on a graveyard I can only wonder how feelings of grief and mourning would change if instead of marble stones I saw patches of mushrooms, plants and critters which, I would know to be—even if only
infinitesimally—embodying lost loved ones.
Such a knowledge of bodily existence, then, can facilitate a change in our understanding of humans as not being separate from Nature, but ingrained in worldly becoming, and thus can open up a materially based ethics. Being transformed by fungi, and being open to such
transformative encounters in the sense of ‘thinking through them’ challenges how we think about ourselves. “[T]he important stuff for life on earth happens in those transformations,” Tsing writes, “not in the decision trees of self-contained individuals. Rather than seeing only the expansion- and-conquest strategies of relentless individuals, we must look for histories that develop through contamination” (Mushroom 29). In the contact of toxic bodies, as I have argued, some form of contamination. “Attention to the material transit across bodies and environments may render it more difficult to seek refuge within fantasies of transcendence or imperviousness” (16), Alaimo writes. An emphasis of material changeability of human bodies and their intertwinement with ecologic assemblages puts an end to such fantasies. Instead, it facilitates an ethical commitment to the world as our separation from it is exposed as an outdated notion of human specialness.
In conclusion, then, the infinity burial project contributes to the healing processes of earthly becoming. Materially, by addressing the toxicity of contemporary bodies and providing mitigation methods in form of mycoremediation, infinity burial cleanses toxic bodies and human-polluted soils. It therefore helps healing damaged ecologies and promoting multi-species flourishing. Conceptually, it highlights the interrelatedness of all beings and stresses that death is not the end point of material existence, but a necessary caesura that facilitates
collaborative survival of life on earth. Such a notion of death can soothe the pain of losing a loved one, as his or her presence remains tangible in the world. Morton says that nothing is ever truly ‘Away’. Whereas this is true, this chapter has shown that the ‘important stuff’ of the world happens in transformations. Toxic assemblages cannot be simply covered up, but if we foster oddkin collaborations, fungi can help transforming harmful substances and create stronger ecological communities. At the same time, lost loved ones are never truly ‘Away,’ also they are transformed and absorbed in the ebb and flow of worldly becoming.
Chapter 2 Experiencing Psilocybin
In the form of what the West has dubbed ‘Magic Mushrooms,’ fungi seem to have accompanied humans for millennials.7 In many Mesoamerican cultures, psychoactive
mushrooms, mostly of the genus Psilocybe, continue to be a central part of traditions, rituals and medicinal practices (Stamets, Psilocybe 11). Shunned as a dangerous drug since its criminalization in the 1970s, psilocybin has seen a recent, if marginal, revival in psychological and neurological research both in the United States and in Europe. This chapter discusses three studies on the effects of psilocybin, all conducted at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore between 2006 and 2016. Roland Griffiths, first author of all three studies and professor of psychiatry and neurosciences, and his team received a lot of attention for the 2006 study on the elicitation of ‘mystical-type experiences’ through the ingestion of a high dose of psilocybin, the neuroactive compound in Psilocybe mushrooms. The study reports that after having received a “high safe dose” (“Psilocybin can” 270) of 30mg psilocybin per 70 kilograms in a monitored session of eight hours,
67% of the volunteers rated the experience with psilocybin to be either the single most meaningful experience of his or her life or among the top five most meaningful
experiences of his or her life …. In written comments, the volunteers judged the meaningfulness of the experience to be similar, for example, to the birth of a first child or death of a parent. Thirty-three percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin
experience as being the single most spiritually significant experience of his or her life, with an additional 38% rating it to be among the top five most spiritually significant experiences. In written comments about their answers, the volunteers often described
7 Psilocybe mushrooms are often found growing on excrements of ruminants roaming forests. In his book Food of
the Gods, Terrance McKenna theorizes that humanoid primates encountered psychedelic mushrooms while hunting deer and consumed them because of hunger. This, according to McKenna, has contributed to the evolution of the human brain (56–60). Although speculative, McKenna’s theory inspires a reconsideration of multispecies entanglements.
aspects of the experience related to a sense of unity without content (pure consciousness) and/or unity of all things. (276–7)
A follow-up study in 2008 suggests that after fourteen months, the “magnitude of these effects was undiminished from similar ratings completed 2 months after the psilocybin session and were substantially and significantly greater than ratings completed 2 months after the [placebo substance] session” (“Mystical-type” 630). The authors note that “it is remarkable that an 8-hour laboratory-based intervention could have such large and sustained personally and spiritually significant effects in such a large proportion of volunteers.”
In a similarly designed study from 2016, Griffiths and his team tested the effects of a psilocybin session on terminally-ill cancer patients with “clinically significant syndrome of psychosocial distress having depressed mood, anxiety, and reduced quality of life” (1181) and found similar results:
The data show that psilocybin produced large and significant decreases in clinician-rated and self-rated measures of depression, anxiety or mood disturbance, and increases in measures of quality of life, life meaning, death acceptance, and optimism. These effects were sustained at 6 months. For the clinician-rated measures of depression and anxiety, respectively, the overall rate of clinical response at 6 months was 78% and 83% and the overall rate of symptom remission was 65% and 57%. Participants attributed to the high-dose experience positive changes in attitudes about life, self, mood, relationships and spirituality, with over 80% endorsing moderately or higher increased well-being or life satisfaction. These positive effects were reflected in significant corresponding changes in ratings by community observers (friends, family, work colleagues) of participant attitudes and behavior. (1194–5)
In commentaries published alongside the 2006 study, Charles Schuster acknowledges “the rigorousness of its design and execution, as well as the clarity of its results” (n.p.). He writes,
“the term psychedelic, when applied to drugs, implies that the drug experience is ‘mind-expanding.’ The paper by Griffiths et al. illustrates the accuracy of this description for psilocybin, and I hope that this landmark paper will also be ‘field-expanding.’”
The discipline of psychopharmacology is inherently interested in encounters between humans and nonhumans, namely the effects produced by medical substances and compounds on the human psyche. Since the focus of this thesis lies on the transformations happening in encounters between humans and fungi, it is worthwhile examining how this task is approached within scientific practices and discourses. In the first section of this chapter I want to touch upon the physiological effects of psilocybin, something that the studies only discuss briefly, but which I find relevant to fully comprehend the mycotransformations elicited by psilocybin. The section therefore starts by revisiting the concept of bodies as assemblages. Karen Barad’s notion of the intra-activity of components within phenomena guides my reading of the psilocybin-human assemblage. The consequences of ingesting psilocybin are ideally suited to think
through the entanglements of human and nonhuman doings in the process of shared becoming. Here, following psilocybin through the body enables an analysis that challenges dominant notions of agency as being a property of individual entities and instead suggests agentic transformations to emerge in the dynamics of bodily assemblages.
The second section analyzes the researchers’ material-discursive practices of framing and enacting psilocybin as a neuroactive substance. I draw on both Annemarie Mol’s enactment theory and Barad’s agential realism, which share an understanding of scientific practices to be fundamentally involved in the performativity of reality through intervention and measurement. With the help of their respective vocabularies, it becomes possible to demonstrate that
researchers employ certain practices in order to tell a particular story about psilocybin which not only shapes discourses around it, but affects the materiality of the substance as well.
Lastly, then, I put forward some thoughts on the political implications of the way, the human-fungus encounter is treated in the studies. Psychedelic research occupies a precarious
position in the wider scientific field as it carefully tries to balance its interest in altered states of minds and the need for producing commercially valuable results. In my analysis, I will include the Heffter Research Institute, a nonprofit organization that is involved in the funding of many studies on hallucinogen drugs. I show that both Griffiths et al.’s research papers and Heffter’s mission statements are infused with discourses popular in the 1960s and 70s. At the same time, however, they employ tactics of depoliticization and disenchantment, terms I borrow from Nikolas Langlitz, in order to generate wider public acceptance. This leads to a plurality of material-discursive enfoldings of psilocybin as cognition enhancer and medicine, but at the same time limits the indeterminacy of encounters between humans and psilocybin.
2.1. Ingesting Psilocybin: Enhanced Relationality and the Wildness of Hallucinogens In the first chapter, I discussed how encountering fungi in the context of burial practices engenders oddkin communities which transform bodies, both materially and discursively. The starting point of my analysis was Lee’s joke about being eaten by mushrooms. As Lee
acknowledges, we normally think of mushrooms as food. Eating, the act of ingesting something, disassembling it and making it ‘vanish,’ is associated with power relations: those who get eaten are commonly thought of as being inferior to those getting to feed. That is why Lee’s audience is affected by her joke about the roles being reversed. It is an unsettling notion to be inferior to fungi. Having said that, studying a strong neuroactive ‘agent’ such as psilocybin, reveals that power relations between eater and eaten are never as straightforward as they seem at first glance.
A new materialist reading of eating questions preconceived notions of the differences between humans and nonhumans. In a section of her book, entitled “the Efficacy of Fat,” Jane Bennett discusses a variety of studies that tested the effects of omega-3 on prison inmates. Bennett uses the results—which indicate a significant improvement of the test subjects’ behavior—in order to underscore her theory of vital matter. The fact that “certain lipids
promote particular human moods or affective states” highlights the otherwise overlooked effects of food stuff as an “example of a nonhuman agency at work” (41). Whereas the effects of fatty acids are indeed very subtle as long as consumed in moderate amounts, strongly neuroactive substances leave no doubt that ingesting certain materials changes our bodily as well as mental constitution. For Bennett, following materials through bodies shows two things. Firstly, it shifts “one’s idea about what counts as an actor.” In her vital materialist account, she applies a very liberal concept of agents, Latour’s actant, “a source of action that can be either human or nonhuman; it is that which has efficacy, can do things, has sufficient coherence to make a difference, produce effects, alter the course of events” (Bennett viii). Secondly, following ‘foodstuff’ helps focusing “one’s attention away from individuals and onto actants in assemblages” (42). Eating then, is not the monocausal act of a human ingesting something. Instead, “on this model of eating, human and nonhuman bodies recorporealize in response to each other; both exercise formative power and both offer themselves as matter to be acted on. Eating appears as a series of mutual transformations in which the border between inside and outside becomes blurry” (49). A human consuming psilocybin is thus not just ‘on’ the
substance, but is better understood as a human-psilocybin assemblage, in which the boundaries of the encountering components are mutually changing.
Some substances, Bennett argues, “can be so contingently well placed in an assemblage that its power to alter the direction or function of the whole is unusually great” (42). With reference to Deleuze and Guattari, she calls such a substance an “assemblage converter.” Upon ingesting, psilocybin is first greeted by acid in the stomach, then nonhuman bacteria in the gut which ‘allow’ the substance to enter the blood stream. In the liver, it is transformed into psilocin (and other metabolites), meanwhile its concentration is greatly reduced, leaving only a fraction of the originally ingested substance. It is believed that it is psilocin that has the correct chemical structure to bind to certain serotonin receptors, which are involved in many neuronal processes. Once activated, those receptors contribute to the sensory alterations that consumers describe:
heightened awareness, hallucinations, ego-dissolution, misgivings about the passing of time, a deep sense of the interconnectivity of all things (Passie et al. 358-9). The cascading processes that follow upon ingesting psilocybin make clear that a lot of the assemblage is indeed affected by psilocybin. As a neuroactive substance, psilocybin not only activates physiological responses, but changes the conscious perception of those ingesting it. As a ‘mind-altering’ substance, it not only makes people hallucinate, but can trigger, as Griffiths et al. indicate, deeply meaningful experiences that can change what people think in the time psilocybin is active, and seem to transform their perception on their lives long-term, as the follow-up study in 2008 suggests.
The concept of assemblage indicates that the power of transformation is not exercised by ‘a self-contained individual actor.’ However, the term ‘assemblage converter’ as well as Bennett’s continuous interchanging of the terms ‘agent’ and ‘actant’ suggest that she
continuously slides back into essentialist notions of agency as a property of stable objects. The metabolization of psilocybin in the body, on the other hand, shows that agency is only created in an encounter and not localizable in any given object. Karen Barad calls these encounters ‘phenomena,’ which she understands not as things but as “ontologically primitive relations— relations without preexisting relata” (“Posthumanist” 815) The “intra-acting ‘components’” are indeterminable prior to any encounter. “It is through specific agential intra-actions,” Barad writes, “that the boundaries and properties of the ‘components’ of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful.” Psilocybin, in this sense, does not possess an intrinsic psychedelic or hallucinogenic agency. Instead, psilocybin intra-acts with many other actants—bacteria, neurotransmitters, synapses, and together these components intra-actively produce a “flow of agency through which ‘part’ of the world makes itself differentially intelligible to another ‘part’ of the world” (817). Psilcoybin transforms bodies not due to a fixed and stable form of agency, but instead resonates within bodily assemblages through which both psilocybin and human are intra-actively changed.
profoundly relational, as the concept of the assemblage denotes, and the idea of a certain inherent agency of things. Even though she asserts that an “emergent causality is at work” in the “eater-eaten complex” (41), she goes on to claim that there is a “productive power inherent to foodstuff” (49). By ultimately betraying her own revision of causality through a return to ‘matter itself,’ she falls short on substantiating the conceptual and political consequences of vital
materiality. As Abrahamson et al. note, it might be less interesting to think about the liveliness of ‘matter itself’ and “more relevant to face the complexities, frictions, intractabilities, and conundrums of ‘matter in relation.’ For it is in their relations that matters become political, whether those politics are loudly contested or silently endured” (10). By falling back on
essentialist notions of matter as ‘stuff’ or things, they argue, Bennett spreads “liberal notions that suggest that ‘acting’ is a capability of individual entities” (11).
Psilocybin becomes political exactly because it has no stable agency, which renders it unpredictable und uncontrollable. It gains neurotropic capacities only through its intra-actions with biochemicals and synapses. And even then, its efficacy is far from stable. Every individual reacts differently to the substance. Some humans are highly sensitive to it, whereas others display high tolerance levels. For some, psilocybin produces vivid hallucinations, others never experience them. Most importantly, whereas for some, a psilocybin transformation is among the most positive experiences they ever had, others sense “profound grief,” as one participant recollects in the follow-up study (Griffiths et al. 19) and sometimes, psilocybin even induces psychosis-like states. Nikolas Langlitz calls this the “wildness of hallucinogens,” and this
‘problem’ “of being unable to stabilize the effects of psychotropic drugs” poses “a real challenge to both pharmacologicalism (assuming that strong drugs always have the same predictable effects) and social constructivism (presupposing that human culture has the power to shape the natural world in its own image” (125). Psilocybin questions the mechanisms of the
pharmaceutical industry because it lacks an inherently stable form of agency that produces reliable results. Also, it eludes commodification in the form of a pill that promises relief from
suffering and complicates profitability because it cannot be patented (Heffter n.p.), as it is found in wild growing mushrooms embedded in multispecies ecologies.
An analysis of the processes ensuing the ingestion of psilocybin highlights the distributive nature of agency within bodily assemblages. Resulting from a critique of Bennett’s tendency to assert agency to fixed ‘things,’ thinking through the embeddedness of psilocybin in relational assemblages renders visible the indeterminacy of ‘things’ prior to an encounter. Relational agency, then, discloses how nonhuman substances participate in the transformation of
assemblages. In the following section, this line of thought will be expanded by analyzing the way, Griffiths and his team enact psilocybin and measure the phenomena they are interested in. In conversation with Barad’s notion of apparatuses and material-discursive phenomena and
Annemarie Mol’s enactment theory, the performative efforts of Griffiths et al.’s studies to create a controllable substance out of psilocybin, become visible.
2.2. Psilocybin in Relation: Enactment and Measurement
Without any inherent form of agency, psilocybin nevertheless transforms humans through intra-action in assemblages. It can afford very positively interpreted insights, and cause anxiety and even psychotic episodes. Psychotomimetic research uses this changeability of the substance to artificially elicit psychosis-like states in order to study them. One and the same substance can thus be enacted very differently in different scientific practices. As Langlitz, drawing on Annemarie Mol’s enactment theory, correctly notes, “there is not a single passive object, say LSD or psilocybin, which can be seen from different points of view—as a hallucinogenic, psychedelic, or psycholytic drug” (156). Psilocybin as a catalyst for mystical-type experiences or psychotic states “are neither ontologically separate phenomena nor are they the same
phenomenon differently interpreted” (158). Instead, the specific practices of the researchers ontologically create multiple substances, with very different material and discursive outcomes.
