Le pouvoir politique des champignons
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718507000176
c’est très sérieux.
Thus, in acknowledging the ontological status of nonhuman organisms like DED, the political struggles surrounding the socio-material development of institutions that seek to preserve global commodity chains and consumption-oriented ecologies is better accounted. The ability of fungus to relate materially to social labor is here requisite for a fuller understanding of the development of said institutional structures. Without the laboring capacity of a rogue fungus, why would social labor be directed toward implementing DED sanitation programs and WPM regulations in the first place? The answer lies in the fact that fungus and other nonhuman organisms can and do have serious political-institutional ramifications via their capacity to enroll the energy and products of social labor. And this political reality necessitates that social labor be (re)employed to curve the dynamic of power between humans and organisms like DED back toward urban metabolic relations less detrimental to social reproduction and accumulation.
Viewed in this manner, certain actants can curve urban ecological conditions and relations disproportionately, if only for a short duration. But the balance of power is always contested during political struggles, resulting in dynamic associations without static or predictable outcomes. Not surprisingly then, a global war against a variety of ‘biopollutants’ continues unabated on the ever-shifting landscapes of capitalist production, trade, and consumption. With this in mind, Castree (2003, p. 209) suggests that we consider the “political effectivity” of nonhuman organisms like DED. In doing so, we acknowledge the contributions of humans and nonhumans to a universe of urban ecological possibilities. And so we can consider the politics surrounding capitalist commodity flows, WPM guidelines, research into disease resistant elms, and municipal forestry programs as being mediated in part by fungi. As Haraway (1991) suggests the cyborg gives us our politics.