12. Mind, Mycelium, Metaphor

Abstract

The 21st century has seen a growing interest in the microbial world and its influence on human behaviour and cognition, particularly in debates on embodied and extended cognition and the emerging concept of the ‘holobiont mind.’ Through an analysis of M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts, David Walton’s The Genius Plague, Tade Thompson’s The Wormwood Trilogy, and Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds, this chapter examines the trope of the mycelial body as a literary device that reconfigures human consciousness, reimagining the mind as embodied and bodies as more-than-human. The mycelial body operates as both a literal and metaphorical ‘infector’ of minds, inducing ontological insecurity in characters’ self-perception and worldviews, while also—albeit only partially—infecting narrative structure itself. Through the mycelial, then, the novels shift attention to the question of where the boundaries of the human mind truly lie, pulling the mind from its abstract perch into multi-species bodies and environments. This reassessment contributes to a renewed literary understanding of the mind in an age of human–microbe symbiosis and ecological interconnectedness, reminding us that the mind is a metaphor, and like all metaphors, it evolves as its conceptual frameworks shift.