Making Kin with/through Fungi: Collaborative Learning in Entangled Environments
Journal of Aesthetic Ecudation 59/2: “Cultural and Natural Geographies”—Proposal for Site-Related Kinesthetic Didactics, eds. Anja Kraus and Eva Cronquist
(summer 2025)
Paper by Sarah Kolb
Learning in and about physically, culturally, and technologically determined geographies always involves processes of reflection and sometimes of unlearning. Only by overcoming ingrained habits of perception and trying out alternative approaches can space be created for new perspectives and learning progress. In Western culture, natural and cultural geographies today are strongly influenced by the models of flora and fauna. We tend to think and act according to a logic of hierarchical family trees and competing individuals that follow straightforward lines of development. With the philosophy of the Enlightenment, it was largely forgotten that the funga, the world of fungi with their widely ramified subterranean networks and strategies of symbiosis and interdependence, might also be considered as a model for development and learning processes. Fungi are masters of collaboration and can easily adapt to new situations and conditions by developing exchange strategies and forms of coexistence with other species. Along the theoretical approaches of Anna Tsing, Roger Caillois, Jacques Rancière, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, the article makes a multisensory examination of the world of fungi the starting point for learning concepts that are based on forms of collaboration, sharing, and caring.