Holistic ecology (a novel)

Abstract

This novel engages with the foundations of material ecocriticism as described by scholars like Donna Haraway, Serpil Opperman, and Anna Tsing. It explores, through a creative practice of fiction, aspects of queer ecology, monster theory, and disability theory, particularly with regards to neurodiversity and neuroqueerness, in the mode of M. Remi Yergeau and Nick Walker. It also draws on current trends in biology and popular science writing, such as fungal communication and cephalopod intelligence, and on tropes from speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction and the Weird. This novel seeks to provide examples of ecological entanglement and nonhuman kinship through imagined assemblages and mutating bodies. The central argument of this narrative is that the apocalypse, or the post-apocalyptic world as understood in popular imagination, need not be hopeless, or a final ending to sentience and emotionality. The “hopeful apocalypse” of this novel envisions an arc of more-than-human becoming – a journey from fearing the fictional fungal mutations to embracing them as a gift. The fungal webs and monstrous bodies of this imagined future allow for communication that transcends human language, and they facilitate continued human and nonhuman survival.