‘The authors of a seminal paper on the symbiotic view of life take a clear stance on this point. “There have never been individuals,” they declare. “We are all lichens.”

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life

In the heart of Guinea among the barren deserts, large mounds emerge from the earth, breaking the horizon of smooth sanded land. Like scattered lumps of clay, these built hills contain a multitude of labyrinthine laneways – crevices and corridors crafted from the caked ground.

Within these arched hills live fungal farmers tending to their gardens of curves and combs.

Here, termites have expanded their bodies into the space in which they live. They cultivate complex structures engineered to keep them cool with circulated air and water drawn up from the underground. In chambers throughout the nest, mushroom plantations break down their food into consumable compost.

An extracorporeal digestive system. An outsourcing of the stomach. The body of the mound becomes the body of the insect and the mind of the many make the mound.

Total inter-dependence

Ancient associations

‘Coral, along with lichens, are also the earliest instances of symbiosis recognized by biologists; these are the critters that taught biologists to understand the parochialism of their own ideas of individuals and collectives. These critters taught people like me that we are all lichens, all coral. In addition, deepwater reefs in some locations seem to be able to function as refugia for replenishing damaged corals in shallower waters. Coral reefs are the forests of the sea.’

Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: 72

'Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means “making-with.” Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing. In the words of the Inupiat computer “world game,” earthlings are never alone.1 That is the radical implication of sympoiesis. Sympoiesis is a word proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company. Sympoiesis enfolds autopoiesis and gen- eratively unfurls and extends it.'

Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: 58