ECOLOGICAL ALEXITHYMIA - LITERATURE AS A CIRCULATORY (ECO)SYSTEM
The phenomenon of not being able to differentiate between emotions and not having the words to express these emotions is called alexithymia.4 It is a trait often observed in people on the autism spectrum. Alexithymia as a personality trait has already been adapted to stand for phenomena stemming from cultural differences, for example between sexes.5 Every person might at some point experience alexithymia, but only 10% of the world population suffers from high levels of alexithymia.6 If there are different experiences of alexithymia, meaning loss of differentiation between emotions or lack of words for emotions bound to cultural or hierarchical differences, I propose that there may be ecological alexithymia as well. The definition of ecological alexithymia is: to not have words for or be able to put into words feelings around nature and ecology.
4. Sifneos, P. E., ApfelSavitz, R. & Frankel, F. H. (1977). The Phenomenon of “Alexithymia”: Observations in Neurotic and Psychosomatic Patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 28(1/4), 47–57.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/45114843
5. In a study by Emily N. Karakis the term alexithymia is used to describe a phenomenon among normative males who might not identify with emotions due to the association with binary gender norms. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.2003.179
ics-paper
6. Taylor, G.J., Bagby, M.R. & Parker, J. (1997). Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness. Cambridge University Press.
Human language is a communication tool, a technology developed and informed by culture.7 Language helps map the world into a pattern and through its use the world can then be made sense of and discussed within a culture or even between cultures. Ultimately, language is determined by the specifics needs for expression and by the way in which a society is organised. This perspective of human and cultural interest dictating language can also be detrimental and add to a sense of alexithymia. Language is a self-perpetuating wheel of describing and shaping the world. When our understanding of the world as an ecosystem is based on anthropocentric frameworks prevalent in the Global North, the language will be shaped as such and will lack words to express our relation to this ecosystem. Ecological alexithymia can come in as a methodology to describe the limitations of language in this specific scenario.8 To address the system, the language perpetuating this system must be addressed.9 Social hierarchies and other power structures are embedded in language because it is currently informed by the culture that perpetuates these systems.10 What follows is a language of oppression. By forcing people to communicate in a language that bears no compatibility to them, the natural language of expression is taken from a people. Being forced to speak the language of the oppressor to make themselves heard suggests that that language and, in turn, the corresponding identity is superior to their own.11 For example, the fact that the society I grew up in, and consequently its language, is founded in neurotypical modes of understanding makes it difficult for a neurodiverse person such as myself to have adequate tools to express myself.
7. Cloud, D. (2014). The Domestication of Language: Cultural Evolution and the Uniqueness of the Human Animal. Cambridge University Press.
8. Chapter four of Against the Anthropocene: Visual Cultures and Environment Today by T.J. Demos dives into the systems of language that hide marginalised groups. Calling violence by its name, he claims, can be done through visual cultures as well as language. In this scenario we call the violence done upon the marginalised through language and written mediums by its name.
9. In Climate Change Is Violence Rebecca Solnit puts it as follows: “Because the revolt against brutality begins with a revolt against the language that hides this brutality.”
10. Shashkevich, A. (2019, August 22). The power of language: how words shape people, culture. Stanford News. https://news.stanford. edu/2019/08/22/the-power-of-language-how-words-shape-people-culture/
A suggested ‘solution’ to this problem could be to keep adapting language and create new vocabulary and vernacular to accommodate for the marginalised. However, if this is still done strictly through culture, the same issue will keep arising in varying forms.
In his book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Albrecht goes on a quest to create words for feelings of distress experienced in relation to environmental disaster and mass extinction. A few words from Albrecht that gained traction are solastalgia (the grief caused by environmental change) and psychoterratic (the feeling that mental health is in direct link to environmental disaster and mass extinction). 12 The term Symbiocene is coined by Glenn Albrecht to signify an era where humans and nature live in a harmonic symbiosis that could follow our current epoch.13 In this era technology and culture would be informed by nature. By extension, language as a cultural phenomenon would also be informed by nature. Nature has always been the basis for culture, yet due to hierarchical, exploitative systems, the essence of nature has been warped to fit into anthropocentric ideologies; theory is structured around the domination of nature. As per Donna Harraway’s essay on situated knowledge: “Nature is only the raw material of culture, appropriated, preserved, enslaved, exalted, or otherwise made flexible for disposal by culture in the loge of capitalist colonialism.”14
So,
what does it mean for language to be truly ‘informed by’ nature?
‘Informed’ implies ‘knowledge of’, meaning that if language is informed by nature it would be edited in relation to the knowledge humans have of nature. For the purpose of a harmonic symbiosis, this knowledge would
11. In Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon Carol Gluck and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing express a similar idea that words change (political or social) meaning in specific places or times. This motion of words is not random. Words have the power to change worlds, but worlds also have power to change words. The impact of the word lies with who has the power to coin or change them and at this point in time, this is often the coloniser who enforces their own identity and ideology.
12. These terms are deemed neologisms, new words that may yet enter mainstream use. The implication of a neologism is that it is further implemented than a protologism, but may also never go beyond being a neologism.
13. Albrecht, G. A. (2019).
Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Cornell University Press.
somehow have to be separate from anthropocentrism or require awareness of the human positioning within the ecosystem. In other words, we have to remove ourselves from the act of appropriating, preserving, enslaving or exalting nature. We cannot rid ourselves of our human experience. We can only become aware of our partiality in engaging with nature through semiotic technologies such as language. Language and knowledge can be built up from a place of understanding this intrinsic semiotic function, the fact that all we observe is translated or mediated through language as a technology. This leads to the paradox of needing knowledge to shape a language that shapes that very knowledge, similar to how addressing the system requires addressing the language shaping that system. To reconceptualize language, we have to reconceptualize knowledge and most importantly systems of categorization that put knowledge into hierarchical frameworks.
Within my research into cocreating with slime moulds, I am missing relevant vocabulary to describe my process, emotions and experiences. This occurrence of ecological alexithymia can be explored through approaching slime moulds as the lens through which ecology reveals a new vocabulary. The first step was to acknowledge that I was using language as a tool for looking in as well as out. In a laboratory, a very sterile and academic setting, I often feel more observer than participant. The slimemoulds become subjugated to this mode of observation. Relating to situated knowledge, my aim became to not split object or subject, but let the process be more participatory for both agents. I was not only looking at slime moulds, I was looking in towards myself and my beliefs. Especially when using a microscope, my observation of the slime moulds
14. Harraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14 (3). 592. http://www.jstor. org/stable/3178066
is mediated. Learning new words through scientific classification made parts of the slime mould visible to me that had previously been part of passive observation. This is something Robin Wall Kimmerer touches upon in her book Gathering Moss. 15 In this book, Kimmerer refers to l anguage as being integral to the act of seeing and observing. This further substantiated the idea that these classifications mediate what is visible to us. The next step is to find words or language expressions that would fit with my experience of slime moulds while disengaging the idea that only one system (the one of classification) holds the most truthful method. This could alleviate the ecological alexithymia I was experiencing. While in my personal life I am learning new words for emotions so that I can try and identify them accurately, I am also learning new vernacular for describing slime moulds. To be able to write with or write about slime moulds, I will have to explore the occurrence of alexithymia in observing my outer and inner world in relation to slime moulds.
The biological makeup and especially the reproductive systems of slime moulds baffle the academic field.16 Because science requires categorization, slime moulds have gained their very own category. According to certain sources slime moulds are categorised under Mycetozoa, an infraphylum.17 The term infraphylum implies that the organisms have general common denominators such as a certain degree of morphological similarity or evolutionary relatedness. In this case it is the existence of sporangia, fruiting bodies. An infraphylum is thus a category of beings that simply do not fit in anywhere else and that may or may not be biologically related to one another. According to other sources slime moulds are not myxomycetes, but protists, because the sporangial form
15. A fitting quote from page 12: “[...] Having words for these forms makes the differences between them so much more obvious. With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”
16. In 2003, Margaret Price wrote a poem called Slime Moulds have Eleven Sexes based on the information available on slime moulds at that time. Currently the suspected number of sexes of slime moulds exceeds 700. This is a great example of how the bias in the scientific field to project human, heteronormative features on other organisms has had to be debunked. Moreover, it is fantastic to see artists claim this kind of knowledge to recontextualize human sexuality. further implemented than a protologism, but may also never go beyond being a neologism.
of the slime mould is only one phase in their lifespan. 18 Protista is an even broader term to categorise all beings that do not fit under other taxonomic terms. They are not a naturally occurring group, it is a strictly human decision to gather these together. Slime moulds problematize the system of categorization, which has a basis in human hierarchical ideals. The concept of language being informed by nature phenomena such as slime moulds might reflect upon and problematize the inherent hegemonic structures within language expression and create a more equal footing. Slime moulds can aid in addressing the language as well as the system, challenging human-focused knowledges and narratives.
This thesis introduces the exploration of ecological alexithymia within the literary medium as a circulatory ecosystem. It is especially important to use a nature-informed language in the literary arts, since it is an important tool in mediating human-nature relations. A problem of the literary arts lies in the cemented idea that the written word ought to be captured in a non-temporal book with strict boundaries. Contrary to oral language (history), where stories are shaped by many through retelling and thus have a living quality to them, the written literary arts limit the circularity of story and narrative. Writer, the written and the reader are all separate entities. This is exactly like the splitting of object and subject, making the possibility of situated knowledge and the evolution of language limited. To mitigate this effect, we ought to move towards the literary arts as an ecosystem.
17. Baldauf, S.L. & Ford Doolittle, W. (1997). Origin and evolution of the slime molds (Mycetozoa). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 94(22), 12007–12012. https:// doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.22.12007
18. Van der Heul. T. (2023, March 6). Myxos are NOT slime.
Fungimap. https://fungimap.org.au/ myxos-are-not-slime/
Microscopic image taken on the 29th of March 2023. Pictured is the empty shell of an oat, moisture bubbles and deserted slime mould veins.
Microscopic image taken on the 7th of March 2023. Pictured is a slime mould sclerotium. The slime mould in the petri dish barely grew and instead transformed into the sclerotium phase to preserve themselves.
LITERARY FUTURE - WRITING IS REPRODUCTIVE
Traditionally, when one thinks of literature the paper novel (with a linear storyline) comes to mind. As early as the 1700s, when the printing press became more widely available and commercial writing became a fact, there have been experiments within the paper novel to shape stories. This shape is familiar. It has been with us ‘commercially’ since at least the 1500s and it makes literature available for the wider public, since it is easily replicable and reprintable. Whether the current era is deemed the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene or the Petrolocene, all of the terms have a common denominator: human interest and profit are central. The same goes for literary art. The publishing industry has truly become an industry; focused on marketability and mass production. This makes a circulatory literary ecosystem near impossible as not only are all agents split, the literary arts are subsequently bound to a limited medium of expression to be a part of the literary tradition. Reducing the shape of the literary arts like this is limiting not only from a storytelling perspective, but also from the point of view of artistic development. It stunts the growth of the literary arts into an experimental, environmentally conscious practice.
In the context of an emerging era such as the Symbiocene, we may envision the literary arts to take on a new shape, beyond the paper novel or the two dimensional written word. Literature, much like language, is a cultural phenomenon and can thus be informed by nature to shape its existence. In the previous chapter the discovery of an altered language was central, what follows is finding the shape of the story we can tell to resolve ecological alexithymia. Subsequently, we may envision the literary arts as a circulatory practice. There are stories from a place of ecological alexithymia that do not fit the traditional novel, stories that will lose a portion of their value if translated into a two dimensional, long-lasting form. Indubitably, there are many other shapes for literary works, such as auditive stories, stories in performance and literary art installations. It is near unequivocable to say that the literary does not by necessity have to be aesthetically pleasing, permanent or two-dimensional. Yet, in the Symbiocene we might aim to let a literary shape serve the narrative without being obstructed by categorisations, commerciality or marketability.
An important countermovement to commercial publishing is zinemaking, which came into fruition during the 40s of the last century. 19 It is not incidental that the current practice of zinemaking stems from the punk movement, an anarchist intervention of the arts. The act of making a zine is a communal practice. The makers take writing, designing, printing and publishing into their own hands, usually producing booklets with whatever material available. The process of making is just as important as the end product. It provided a space for unpublished, marginalized people to publish stories, engage with fan culture or promote their artistry in any other form. Due to its small size, it was easily spread and widely
19. Triggs, T. (2010). Fanzines: The DIY Revolution. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
accessible. In essence, zines were not about commerciality, but about community. Ever since the punk movement and accessibility to printing technology for the broader public, zines have transformed into all kinds of experimental shapes. The beauty of the zine community is the sharing of knowledge and resources. A great example is Not Just a Library, by Not Just a Collective.20 Anyone can approach them to display their zines in the ever (r)evolving library, a living kind of ecosystem where people reanimate the community with their contributions.
Following up on the early punk movement that brought us zinemaking is the solarpunk movement, dubbed by Miss Olivia Louis on Tumblr. 21 It was further explored by Adam Flynn in a manifesto, where solarpunk is described as a way to make life better for the present and the future.22 This concept does not concern itself with being reduced to being a movement; it encourages solarpunk as a genre, a design practice or a way of living. What sets it apart from cyberpunk or steampunk is the optimism towards a possible future. It is about community, rebellion, repurposing and most importantly: “We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.”23 Against categorisation, anti-capitalist and community-focused, solarpunk is an ideal starting point for the literary circulatory ecosystem. I cannot make the story with slime moulds fit in a traditional shape without conforming to hierarchical systems that perpetuate violence upon the slime moulds whose story I want to tell. Thus, I need to discover a new way of making literary art, one that engages other organisms as part of the literary practice and gives agency to all parts of the reproductive writing process. One that makes the literary art practise an embodied process, where a story is carried within a person or being.
20. Not Just a Collective (2023). https://archive.notjustacollect. repl.co/
21. Olivia. (2015). Miss Olivia Lousie. https://missolivialouise.tumblr. com/post/94374063675/heres-athing-ive-had-around-in-my-headfor-a
22. Flynn, A. (2014, September 4). Solarpunk: Notes towards a manifesto. Hieroglyph. http://www. hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/
23. The Solarpunk Community. A Solarpunk Manifesto. http:// www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/
A writer who is already promoting the literary arts as a more holistic and situated medium is Christian Bök. In an interview about The Xenotext Experiment he said: “The idea of the book, for me, has become something more than a temporal sequence of words and pages. The book need no longer wear the form of codices, scrolls, tablets, etc.--instead, the book of the future might in fact become indistinguishable from buildings, machinery, or even organisms.”24 His Xenotext Experiment is a literary work at the intersection of art and science and it resembles a continuous circular loop. In the work, bacteria are implanted with DNA wherein a line of a poem is inscribed. By growing, the bacteria transform the poem by altering their makeup.25 If seen as beyond categorization or boundaries such as the traditional book, the literary arts can become a medium for interspecies works to be. There is a thin line, however, between cocreating and utilising or exploiting. For example, Oli Elisar made a work where he grew the Hebrew alphabet from bacteria and he was quoted saying about this project: “The bacteria live in a free space, fighting for territory and food, controlling their surroundings. But actually, they live in a petri dish, a small one. They grow in shapes I placed them in and in the timing that I’ve set. I’m their God.“26 Thinking like this not only diminishes the role of the microorganism in the making of the art, it also further endorses cultured-focused thinking of man in dominion over nature.
Aside from beguiling human taxonomy systems, physarum polycephalum further problematizes anthropocentric thinking by being unicellular as well as a community. This slime mould is one cell with multiple nucleae, multiple sexes within one organism. Writing about them is as unearthing as observing them, since they can be addressed with either
24. Voyce, S. (2007). The Xenotext Experiments: An Interview with Christian Bök. Postmodern Culture. Johns Hopkins University Press. http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.107/17.2voyce.html
25. Wershler, D. (2012). The Xenotext Experiment, So Far. Canadian Journal of Communication, 37. http://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2012v37n1a2526
26. Rodríguez Fernández, C. (2016, November 19). Teaching Bacteria to make Living, Evolving Typography. LabioTech. https://www. labiotech.eu/trends-news/ori-elisar-biodesign-bacteria-typography/
plural pronouns as well as singular pronouns and cannot be boiled down to one sex. The most well-known case of slime moulds, the Tokyo map experiment by Hokkaido University, displays their so-dubbed problem solving ability.27 By putting slime moulds in an arena of science, they become equal subject to exalting and exploitation. 28 One characteristic is favoured over the other, because it can be profitable when adapted for human use, whereas queering systems is not outwardly exploitable by capitalism. In that sense, slime moulds can inspire literature. After having looked at the paths of slime mould under a microscope, I felt inspired by the shapes they make on a microscopic level. Within this small image, could I find language? Could I find a story that they may present to me or that I can gather from them? I digitally wrote on active growth. Letting words and phrases come to me naturally. This stream of consciousness way of writing is out of my comfort zone, as it is a practice where the writers write everything that comes to mind, but it felt in tune to the growth of the slime moulds. My stories, or what I wanted to tell, grew along with the growth of the slime moulds. The editing process was like a slime mould regrouping at a central point and rerouting according to new insights.
For the reader of the slime mould it can become a literary work at the point of interaction, without having to immediately recognize the work as consumable art. Imagine a writer who produces a new life: the written (in the broadest sense). A certain amount of energy, substance and metaphorical nutrition is put into this life. 29 The written, set into a new context lives their life until coming into contact with a reader. The reader takes in the written, inadvertently also taking parts of the writer. A porousness or willingness is required for this process. It can even be said that a reader
27. Tero et al. (2010). Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design. Science, (327). 439-442. https://doi..org/10.1126/science.1177894
28. As Aimee Bahng said in her essay Plasmodial Improprieties: Octavia E. Butler, Slime Molds, and Imagining a Femi-Queer Commons: “Swept up into a culture of optimization and risk aversion that celebrates its efficiency rather than its queerer characteristics, slime mold gets oriented toward models of competition when entrepreneurial technoscience asks it to perform spectacularized performances of problem-solving efficiency and adaptability.”
29. Elvia Wilk, in her book of essays Death by Landscape, writes about writing as reproduction: “Forget species perpetuation: in this model, writing is reproductive, and its product is a circulatable, compostable, regenerative gift.”
becomes contaminated by the written. A part of them may corrupt, infect or soil the reader. This is unavoidable and additionally the moment where the reader reproduces a new life. The waste is made. This waste can be whatever the reader did or did not take away, any part of the reading process that they expel into the outer world. Waste does not equal unusable, it can be manure, fertilising a new process of bringing new life. Rather, let’s look at the process of reading as recognizing nourishment and excess to be reabsorbed into the ecosystem.
My first slime mould venture, done on the 11th of October 2022. At first, I tried to grow the western alphabet In this picture, the letters A to F can be seen. Only one petri dish had succesful slime mould growth. Soon after this, I started to question the implication of giving my language to them. Instead I wanted to focus on learning their language.
One of my very fi rst pieces written on slime mould images. The microscopic image is from somewhere in November 2022. Because I felt burdened by the idea of imposing on their life, I wrote on the deserted veins of the slime mould, routing the paths they were no longer using. Most of what I wrote were questions I had or desires I felt towards slime moulds.
BECOMING BETTER READERS -
READING IS DIGESTIVE
Integral to cocreation is a certain level of understanding of one another. It would seem crucial to have an accurate reading of a person’s, or in this case being’s, functioning or semiotic intent. The definition of reading can be extended much further than relating to just text (whether spoken or written).30 If I were to visit an art gallery with an exhibit of paintings by an artist, there is the option to read placards next to each painting that provide a title, medium, date and other relevant information. I can also try to read a painting. It is not unheard of to attempt a new perspective to visual art. One example might be Tina M. Campt’s book Listening to Images, where she theorises that listening to images is an approach to understanding the forms of subjectivity in the identity photography vernacular.31 A similar practice may be done with reading. There are already specified modes of reading - critical, scanning, skimming, intensive or extensive -, but they all focus on gleaning different information from a text by choosing what to read. It is a method of picking, of splitting and of denying the situation of a text. Besides, these methods only work on written text. There is no way to perform modes like these to read a human or any other organism. I cannot scan or skim social inter-
30. One definition, taken from Cambridge Online Dictionary, is: to look at words or symbols and understand what they mean. Another definition given is: to hear or understand someone.
31. Important to note is that this mode of listening to images is entangled with Black Atlantic cultural significance to sound. Campt poses that identity photography of Black Atlantic people cannot simply be looked at, as it denies colonial context and the indigenous cultural traditions.
action, picking and choosing whatever I like. It would decontextualise the object of my reading and myself, effectively splitting subject and object once again.
One of the criteria I was tested on during my process of autism diagnosis was if I was able to read situations properly. This entailed a close examination of whether I could recognize a faux-pas and come up with appropriate bodily and linguistic responses in varying social contexts. I scored lower than a neurotypical person. This does not necessarily mean that I am unable to read situations, but rather that I need more context clues than neurotypical people. It is reading with a disability, but less to do with written text like in dyslexia. I need the situated knowledge in order to position myself. The complete picture would not only include the cultural aspects, but also the social, political and even biological. With humans, there is a direct assumption that by belonging to the same species there is no need to delve into biological specifics. There is no social obligation to disclose biological facts, there is not even a right to those facts and I by no means want to enforce the idea that a person’s body ought to be subject to general speculation. I mean to illustrate that more often than not, a part of someone’s context is missing. Neither is there ever a complete picture, painting or text. They are mediated by a perception through identity. A reader can digest whatever a writer offers up, yet they can also digest whatever the medium has to offer and whatever context the work is put in. This digestion in turn has an influence on what is written, what is reproduced through the writer. Even as the writer rereads and edits their work, they digest their work to reproduce.
The literary can be a tool to mediate or otherwise influence human-nature relations. It can express feelings and give words to ecological alexithymia. However, for that to work, there ought to be a closer connection between the writer, the written and the reader. Commercialising the literary puts the reader in the role of the consumer instead of the digester. The written, in the instance of commercial publishing, is just a product to be completely absorbed without giving back. The writer would provide work by expelling more than they absorb. An illustration of this maladaptive practice is the distortion present in the current definition of a literary digest. A larger text is compressed, ‘relevant’ information is taken out and rewritten or quoted. The writer of a digest is a mediator of a larger text to the reader. This mediation is just as subjective as an original work. However, they are often not acknowledged to be as situated as they are. In a traditional digest, substances are taken for sustenance, but there is no waste, no excess to give back. This is not circulatory either.
The physarum polycephalum growing in petri dishes in my house has a couple of major life stages: sclerotium (the dried out or hibernation stage), plasmodium (the slimy stage), sporangia (the fruiting reproductive bodies) and amoeba (when it is one cell with one nucleus). They are all part of the cycle of a slime mould life, currently part of the ecosystem of my writing. The most researched phase of the slime mould is the plasmodial stage, more clearly visible to the naked eye without technological mediation. There are many experiments done with phys. polyc., a slew of them focussed on testing problem solving skills, seeing how they might perform next to human frameworks of intelligence. An astute observation by Aimee Bahng: “The novelty of the story lies in the surprise
humans have at nonhuman intelligence and how that intelligence can be harnessed to serve human interests. Such a relation reproduces a colonialist version of trans-species exchange and sustains fascination as a means of reinforcing human supremacy in species hierarchy.”32 However, this novelty ought to be directed at the slime mould as a whole from a non-anthropocentric viewpoint. If we read slime moulds while projecting onto them ideologies of othering, a direct inferiority is imagined for the more-than-human organism even if it may not be done from malintent. As a reader, it can be vital to be aware of their position within the literary ecosystem and the position of the written and the writer. There is no sole responsibility on the reader to uncover all of the literary ecosystem to enjoy a piece of literary art. There is merely a certain level of awareness involved of ones partiality within the literary ecosystem.
The story to be read from slime moulds challenges and problematises human systems of knowledge, language and culture. There is no direct language to glean from a microscopic organism, not one that is congruent with our systems of language, yet they can inspire our systems of language. They can inform the language within and outside of the literary arts. I look at the slime moulds in a petri dish and approaching them from a biological standpoint has the effect that I might question my humanness, in as such that my culture may not be congruent with their way of living. Human cultures merge and so may more-than-human cultures. It is a phenomenon already seen between different slime mould cultures. Two different slime moulds have grown in different environments. One might have had to cross a boundary of salt (a mineral not favoured by slime moulds) and another had not. If placed in a petri dish together and
32. Bahng, A. (2017, June 23). Plasmodial Improterties: Octavia E. Butler, Slime Molds, and Imagining a Femi-Queer Commons. [Audio]
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/ podcast/plasmodial-improprieties-octavia-e-butler-slime-molds/ id1252851787?i=1000389162055
surrounded by salt, the slime mould who has not been met with salt will not grow over it, but the other will. By merging into one being, they share the knowledge within their chemical composite and consequently, the slime mould can cross the salt border as one.33 Metaphorically, I feel the slime moulds and I have exchanged our knowledges, inspired each other. It inspired me to grow into a being of artistic resilience, bringing a voice to diversify literary language theory.
The method of ecological alexithymia laid bare for me what I have been missing within literary art processes and the language I use as a tool to navigate and create. The shift away from anthropocentric paradigms on language may very well be possible through situated knowledges of the self in relation to nature and ecology. This, in turn, can open up the possibility of letting human technologies be informed by nature; a step towards conceiving the era of the Symbiocene. Making an interspecies work may be done by acknowledging the literary art practice as an ecosystem. In this ecosystem writer, the written and the reader are all equally important parts that rely on each other. The ideal would be a harmonic symbioses, but that may require a restructuring of all human cultural systems. Right now, it is a speculative future to theorise upon by further deep exploration of ecological alexithymia and nature language phenomena.
33. Boussard, A., Delescluse, J., Pérez-Escudero A. & Dussutour, A. (2019). Memory inception and preservation in slime moulds: the quest for a common mechanism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 374 (1774). https://doi. org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0368
Microscopic image taken on the 20th of December 2022. Pictured is strands of fungi. Slime moulds are named after moulds, from the thought that they were in the same fungi taxonomy. However, later it seemed this was not the case and slime moulds got their own category.
Microscopic image taken on the 29th of December. Pictured is aspergillus niger, a fungi that contaminated a petri dish with slime moulds. There are many negative connotations related to the word contamination. It seems to be in line with loss of purity. It seems to emphasize the objectivity within science, a binary of pure and impure, natural and unnatural. It is quite like the main character in Annihiliation by Jeff Vandermeer, who breathes in spores and becomes contaminated by the subject of her studies. She sees herself as an unreliable narrator. One can also say that because of her contamination, her narration becomes more true.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albrecht, G. A. (2019). Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Cornell University Press.
Bahng, A. (2017, June 23). Plasmodial Improterties: Octavia E. Butler, Slime Molds, and Imagining a Femi-Queer Commons. [Audio] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plasmodial-improprieties-octavia-e-butler-slime-molds/ id1252851787?i=1000389162055
Baldauf, S.L. & Ford Doolittle, W. (1997). Origin and evolution of the slime molds (Mycetozoa). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 94(22), 12007–12012. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.22.12007
Boddy, J. (2016, August 31). A cat co-authored an influential physics paper. Science.org. https://www.science.org/content/article/cat-co-authored-influential-physics-paper
Boussard, A., Delescluse, J., Pérez-Escudero A. & Dussutour, A. (2019). Memory inception and preservation in slime moulds: the quest for a common mechanism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 374 (1774). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0368
Campt, T. (2017). Listening to Images. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1134dm3
Cloud, D. (2014). The Domestication of Language: Cultural Evolution and the Uniqueness of the Human Animal. Cambridge University Press.
Demos, T.J. (2017). Against the Anthropocene: Visual Cultures and Environment Today. Sternberg Press.
Flynn, A. (2014, September 4). Solarpunk: Notes towards a manifesto. Hieroglyph. http://www.hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/
Gluck, C. & Lowenhaupt Tsing, A. (2009). Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon. Duke University Press.
Harraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14 (3). 592. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066
Hetherington, J. H. & Willard, F. D. C. (1975). Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He. Physical Review Letters, vol. 35 (21), 1442. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.35.1442
Karakis, E. N., & Levant, R. F. (2012). Is Normative Male Alexithymia Associated with Relationship Satisfaction, Fear of Intimacy and Communication Quality among Men in Relationships? The Journal of Men’s Studies, 20(3), 179–186.
https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.2003.179
Not Just a Collective. (2023). https://archive.notjustacollect.repl.co/
Olivia. (2015). Miss Olivia Lousie. https://missolivialouise.tumblr.com/post/94374063675/heres-a-thing-ive-had-around-inmy-head-for-a
Rodríguez Fernández, C. (2016, November 19). Teaching Bacteria to make Living, Evolving Typography. LabioTech.
https://www.labiotech.eu/trends-news/ori-elisar-biodesign-bacteria-typography/
Shashkevich, A. (2019, August 22). The power of language: how words shape people, culture. Stanford News.
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/22/the-power-of-language-how-words-shape-people-culture/
Sifneos, P. E., Apfel-Savitz, R. & Frankel, F. H. (1977). The Phenomenon of “Alexithymia”: Observations in Neurotic and Psychosomatic Patients. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 28(1/4), 47–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45114843
Solnit, R. (2015, November 20). Climate Change Is Violence. Common Dreams. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/20/climate-change-violence
Taylor, G.J., Bagby, M.R. & Parker, J. (1997). Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness. Cambridge University Press.
Tero et al. (2010). Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design. Science, (327). 439-442. https://doi..org/10.1126/science.1177894
The Solarpunk Community. A Solarpunk Manifesto
. http://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/
Triggs, T. (2010). Fanzines: The DIY Revolution. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
Van der Heul. T. (2023, March 6). Myxos are NOT slime. Fungimap. https://fungimap.org.au/myxos-are-not-slime/
Van Heesbeen, O.J. (2020). Als ik dier was, was ik mens.
Voyce, S. (2007). The Xenotext Experiments: An Interview with Christian Bök. Press. http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.107/17.2voyce.html
Wall Kimmerer, R. (2003). Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
. Oregon State University Press.
Wershler, D. (2012). The Xenotext Experiment, So Far.
http://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2012v37n1a2526
Wilk, E. (2022). Death by Landscape. Soft Skull Press.
Canadian Journal of Communication
