REIMAGINING BODY HORROR: FUNGAL BODIES IN CONTEMPORARY ECOGOTHIC AND ECOHORROR by Natalie Palmer Swanson A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Ogden, Utah April 13, 2026 Approved ______________________________ Signature of Committee Chair ______________________________ Signature of Committee Member ______________________________ Signature of Committee Member Rebekah Cumpsty, Ph.D. Name of Committee Chair David W. Hartwig, Ph.D. Name of Committee Member Ashley Caranto Morford, Ph.D. Name of Committee Member Swanson 1 Reimagining Body Horror: Fungal Bodies in Contemporary Ecogothic and Ecohorror Contemporary ecogothic and ecohorror fiction reconfigures body horror as a sign of ecological interdependence and corruption. In these narratives, body horror serves as a physical manifestation that transforms the human body into a text to be read and interpreted for indications of a larger crisis. The framework of the ecogothic examines cultural anxieties regarding the relationship between humans and the natural world, while ecohorror uses those anxieties to highlight dread and a struggle for human autonomy while surrounded by natural elements. In the fictional texts examined in this thesis, the primary form of body horror is associated with fungal infestation, and the transformations it causes expose the human body as permeable and changeable by external forces. Body horror uses physical displays of the disturbed human form to undo preconceived ideas about the human body. The discomfort elicited by body horror allows new perspectives and viewpoints to be presented. In this thesis, I argue that the examined fictional sources demonstrate that humans are inherently inextricable from nature, and the aesthetics of ecohorror and ecogothic body horror create moments of discomfort and defamiliarization that encourage and provide space for the reevaluation of predetermined Eurocentric boundaries between non-human and human nature. Non-human nature is often considered separate from humans, especially in Western thought that prioritizes human exceptionalism, but this distinction is demonstrably false. For example, a scientific study published in 2019 reports the estimate that “the typical adult human body consists of about 30 trillion human cells and about 38 trillion bacteria,” meaning that human bodies host eight trillion more bacterial cells than human cells — though human cells make up a larger amount of mass (Sender et. al. 1). These findings support Melissa K. Nelson’s examination of eco-eroticism, the idea that humans share an intimate interdependence with the Swanson 2 non-human world, rhetoric that has historically been dismissed or demonized by institutions of societal control such as the patriarchy, colonialism, and Judeo-Christian religious ideologies (Nelson 232). In Nelson’s analysis, she expands on Stacy Alaimo’s concept of “the contact zone,” defining it as the literal physical space of entanglement between humans and nature (Nelson 232). When the concept of “the contact zone” is examined alongside scientific data on the body’s reliance on non-human nature, this reliance reveals the human body itself as the site of contact. The view of the human body as a “semipermeable membrane” allows sensual and erotic experiences to be awakened, enabling humans to become freer and in touch with a deeper, more profound form of existence through interaction with non-human nature (Nelson 230). This bodily connection is highlighted through the lens of ecogothic and ecohorror in ways that initially appear unsettling, such as instances of body horror. Since ecogothic and ecohorror fiction expose humans as inseparable from non-human nature, the use of body horror in fictional narratives and the transformation associated with it oppose the ideologies of human autonomy and the idea of unrestrained agency. For example, forms of corruption within nature are displayed through body horror, vividly showing the effects of environmental degradation. The altered or transformed human body in these narratives often shows biological entanglement with nature and the way oppressors may exploit that connection. By reading fictional works through the lens of ecogothic and ecohorror thinking, body horror reveals the merging of humanity with non-human nature, showing a close physical interdependence through the transformation of the body. This interdependence often presents conflict, but it is not solely a corruptive force. Body horror and transformation also reveal individuals to be strongly affected by the sensual effects of nature outside of humanity, not only pervasive corruption. Swanson 3 Along with personal effects on the body, fictional instances of body horror also reveal the larger crises threatening nature and society, as well as humanity’s direct impact and responsibility for crises. In the fictional works examined in this thesis, connection is expressed through fungus and mycological networks. What is seen as monstrous, grotesque, or horrific arises from the closeness and interdependence between humans and the natural world, as well as from the bodily effects produced by landscapes devastated by extraction and environmental ruin. Most distinctly, body horror reveals crises on an individual level, how an individual can physically interact with their surroundings, and have a connection to both the present and the past. Teresa Fitzpatrick writes in “The Rise of Ecohorror and Ecogothic Criticism” that popular fictional ecogothic and ecohorror works are not purely about highlighting what is scary about the setting and events of narratives. Fitzpatrick asserts that interrogating ideas of human superiority (anthropocentrism) enables a serious analysis of the unstable, entangled boundaries between humanity and nature in the face of ecological crisis. Drawing on Fitzpatrick’s writing, my own analysis will demonstrate that the depiction of body horror, in particular, has the capability to do much more than simply elicit disgust. Powerful commentary and meaning can be found in the expression of body horror. As Fitzpatrick writes, fictional works can “explore human anxieties over symbiotic and possible plant-human futures,” and visual depictions of physical and literal mergings help emphasize those anxieties (Fitzpatrick 277). Body horror enables ecogothic and ecohorror works to articulate important human and non-human connections markedly and unmistakably. One of the most distinct connections the human body has to non-human nature is shown through narratives centered on the experience of womanhood, which are in the primary works examined in this paper. Each narrative depicts the protagonist’s experiences as being inextricable Swanson 4 from their setting, as they hinge on each primary character’s lived experience as a woman in their fictional world. Connections between women and nature have been made in stories from different cultures around the world, such as the myriad versions of the story of a woman who married a bear, found in many traditional cultures where bears live or have historically lived (Nelson 244). Stories of this kind offer insight into the coexistence of humans and other animals and demonstrate the “uncanny likeness” between bears and humans, particularly in intelligence and family structures (Nelson 244). The contemporary fictional works analyzed in this paper show varied connections and experiences arising from women’s bodies encountering non-human nature, thereby demonstrating ideas about humanity’s coexistence with the natural world. In this thesis, I examine four works of fiction to demonstrate that the aesthetic discomfort of body horror in ecogothic and ecohorror fiction creates space to consider the human body’s relationship to non-human nature. This connection unsettles the Eurocentric opposition between nature and humanity, giving space to examine preconceived and limited ideas. I first examine Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, in which the colonizer influence of the wealthy Doyle family corrupts the natural world as well as the Indigenous people who are native to the land, and it does so through co-opted and stolen knowledge that functions as a sinister fungal network. The house’s pervasive influence shapes the novel’s main character, who inherits knowledge of the past and a history of exploitation. To further analyze the effects of corrupted land and inherited knowledge, I examine the ecohorror film Gaia, directed by Jaco Bouwer, which depicts a reclamatory and feminized fungal presence in a forest where humans attempt to live in reciprocity with the natural world as it fights back against industrialization and the harmful effects of human society. The forest ultimately harnesses mycological power to fully incorporate human life into a mycelial network. Swanson 5 The third work I examine is Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, in which the protagonist’s body mutates due to the transforming influence of fungal spores, revealing the changeability of the human body as an entity connected to non-human nature. The primary character’s connection to a fungal network serves as a strong physical connection to a history of racialized control, where the experience of body horror exposes trauma and violence, providing her with a new perspective as well as a new sense of connectedness to herself, other humans, and non-human nature through fungal transformation. To support and enhance the ideas of permeable bodies explored in my analysis of Sorrowland, I turn to Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris, which depicts its main character struggling to create art and grieve in an isolated swampland. This swampland mirrors her inner turmoil following the death of her estranged father, paired with her unsettled identity within her Mi’kmaw heritage. Through body horror and integration with non-human nature, the primary character experiences a powerful spiritual awakening through fungal infestation and artistic expression as she incorporates the natural world into her art. Both Mexican Gothic and Gaia give distinct warnings about their crises. While Sorrowland and Green Fuse Burning do the same through the grotesque transformations in their narratives, they also acknowledge that the crisis at hand offers possible ways of thinking and acting that could serve as solutions. The women in these fictional works all have sensual, eco-erotic experiences involving fungal networks, introducing new understandings of experience through sensation and bodily disruption. While corruption is unmistakably present in these contemporary ecogothic and ecohorror narratives, the impulse toward the erotic is present for each woman’s survival and/or regeneration, for which “procreation is key not only for our biological species but also for [...] imaginative and spiritual capacities” (Nelson 232). Reciprocity between non-human and human nature is framed as an essential connection, one that Swanson 6 can be corrupted and used to manipulate, abuse, and kill others. The surrender to and joining with nature is also shown to be a difficult process. However, the women in these narratives who encounter the forces of non-human nature ultimately use them to deepen their connection to other humans and to the natural world surrounding them. Fungal Body Horror as Systemic Corruption in Mexican Gothic Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia follows Noemí Taboada, a socialite in 1950s Mexico. Noemí is tasked by her father with visiting her cousin Catalina, a recent resident of High Place due to her marriage, after receiving many concerning letters from Catalina. High Place is a remote manor in a state of decay, home to a wealthy white family who gained their wealth through colonial exploitation of the land. Catalina insists in her letters that she is poisoned and being haunted. When Noemí arrives at the estate, she meets the Doyle family. She learns that the entire house is infected with “the gloom,” a mycelial network that stores memory and sustains the Doyles’ immortality, paired with generational practices of incest and human sacrifice. Noemí experiences visions and sleepwalking before realizing she is becoming infected with the fungus and is the intended host for the family patriarch to continue his bloodline. Noemí discovers that the power of one of the family members’ corpses, patriarch Howard Doyle’s first wife Agnes, has fully integrated with the fungus, and is the source of the Doyle’s fungal power. She destroys the corpse of Agnes and escapes with Catalina and Francis Doyle, the only Doyle who showed sympathy for Noemí. In Mexican Gothic, the systemic colonial corruption presented in the narrative is manifested as body horror, turning the human physical form into documentation of slow violence and the extraction of resources from Indigenous peoples and the land. The fungal infestations in particular present an “uncanny manifestation” of the environmental violence committed by the Swanson 7 Doyle family over generations (Deckard 174). The Doyle residence and the land surrounding it are infested with “the gloom,” which hosts the memories of the Doyle family (Moreno-Garcia 210). This is shown to be a deadly interconnectivity between human and non-human nature, as the Doyles wield their fungal power for exploitation and control (Duncan 117). The fungal network makes it clear that no strict divide exists between the social practices of the individuals at High Place and the natural world, emphasizing trans-corporeality, or “the material interconnections of human corporeality with the more-than-human world” (Fitzpatrick 265). The novel’s vivid body horror emphasizes the continually blurred boundary between what is human and what is fungal, as well as the physical crossing of that boundary. Howard Doyle is described as “a living, breathing, pustule,” something almost entirely unfathomable and grotesque to the protagonist, Noemí (Moreno-Garcia 117). The fungus's effect on the household displays a group of humans at odds with the natural world, because while they can control others through the mycorrhizal network around them, it also harms them physically in return. As will be discussed later in my analysis of Vern in Sorrowland, a fungal invasion can also enable positive transformation and connection. However, the fungus's effect on Howard Doyle is a deterioration of his body that requires him to inhabit a new host each time his body is reclaimed by fungal forces, a cycle repeated for generations that abuses the connection between humans and non-human nature (Fitzpatrick 275). The nearly three-hundred-year cycle of fungal reproduction reveals that the Doyle family is not autonomous but is linked in a web network, showing a “human/nature imbrication [...] loaded with a nightmarish quality of dread and threat” (Duncan 117). The horror and nightmarish elements of Mexican Gothic, such as the fungal reproduction of the Doyle family, blend together to demonstrate the exploitation of resources by them and Swanson 8 years of systemic corruption at their hands. Howard Doyle’s silver mining has stripped the land of its natural resources, and the Doyles’ use of Indigenous Mexican workers as nothing more than “mulch” shows the family’s attempts to master and command people and the land as well as the fungus that envelops their surroundings (Moreno-Garcia 212). The Doyles’ actions are an attempt to “devour all life” through their capital accumulation, destroying not only human life but also the natural world (Deckard 183). The plans of the Doyles follow the playbook of the social elite colonizer, with standards for what makes a body “fit” or “unfit.” They espouse eugenic ideas about bodies, while essentially practicing selective breeding to create their own mental conception of the ideal bloodline. The vision that Noemí has of her body, of “[f]leshy, white, fan-shaped caps sliced through her marrow and her muscle,” is a body horror manifestation of the Doyles’ colonizer intentions for her as well as their past violations of others, which are both part of their grasping for parasitic survival (Moreno-Garcia 207). The fungal transformation that Noemí sees of her own body is one of many visions she experiences while at the Doyle residence, not all of which are entirely unpleasant to her. The influence of the fungus and its ability to generate erotic experience is nearly as potent as its ability to generate horror. There are several instances of eco-eroticism in Noemí’s experience, even if they are sharply contrasted or eventually overtaken by pure disgust or horror. The warning voice of the remnant consciousness of a dead Doyle relative, Agnes, often whispers to Noemí, warning her that the Doyles can influence others through the fungus. Virgil Doyle, Catalina’s husband, appears in Noemí’s dreams simultaneously as a threat and as a sexually enticing figure. In one particular instance, Noemí has just gotten out of the bath when she sees Virgil appear in the bathroom. Noemí initially hears a warning in her mind, which fades out as she feels Virgil kiss her, which she finds “pleasant,” and she “relax[es] her tense body,” no longer Swanson 9 feeling fear and apprehension (Moreno-Garcia 182). While at first, Noemí is frightened, she becomes an enthusiastic participant in her fungal dream encounter with Virgil, “desire making her shiver, delicious and thick, spreading across her limbs,” a sensual experience that Noemí becomes enraptured in until the warning voice of Agnes pulls her out of the moment and wakes her from her dream (Moreno-Garcia 183). This dream, this realistic, sensual experience, is made possible through the communication of the fungal network with Noemí’s body. Due to the fungus in the Doyle house, Noemí finds herself caught between the allure of ecoeroticism and sensual connection to the non-human natural world, the expectations society holds of her, and her wish to break free from the Doyles. With the help of Agnes’s constant voice of influence, herself a victim of “the gloom,” Noemí can resist the temptation to succumb completely in order to survive. However, Noemí is only barely able to resist the “sweet, sickening desire,” and an unspoken wish “[t]o be taken, in the dirt, in the dark, without preamble or apology” (Moreno-Garcia 80-81). The sexual discoveries of Noemí emphasize the blurring of boundaries regarding what is seen as the “proper” expression of sexuality. Since these experiences are made possible by the fungus, they also demonstrate a sensual connection that transgresses typical or Eurocentric ideals for the ways humans should interact with nature. Ultimately, however, the knowledge provided by the fungus is the power that allows Noemí to avoid being exploited and trapped by the Doyles and their corruption. Noemí, through a vision of the past, sees the way in which the power of the fungus was first corrupted. Noemí sees Howard Doyle using his knowledge of alchemy and biological science to discover that he requires a human mind with “real consciousness” to serve as a vessel to the mycelium in order to control it, so he organizes the power of the fungus to shape what were previously “crude and random occurrences” into a controlled system (Moreno-Garcia 282). Swanson 10 Doyle does this by sacrificing his first wife, Agnes, by burying her alive and making her a host to the fungus. Through her vision, Noemí experiences the horrific physical sensations that Agnes felt as if they are actually happening to her own body, allowing her to form deep empathy for Agnes. The fear, the “pressure of the cloth against her face, suffocating her,” the feeling of “splinters digging into her skin” from pressing on the lid of a closed coffin, is body horror that is felt through the mycorrhizal network that connects the minds of Agnes and Noemí (Moreno-Garcia 282). When Noemí actually sees what remains of Agnes’s corpse, she is “a monstrous Virgin in a cathedral of mycelium,” a grotesque merging of Agnes with the fungus that fully transforms and incorporates her into the mycorrhizal network (Moreno-Garcia 281). The concept of a woman’s body becoming a vessel for non-human nature is explored in Gaia, and in the next section, I will further demonstrate the connections between the feminine and nature, particularly a relentless, reclamatory nature. Displaced Bodies and Reclamatory Nature in Gaia Gaia is a South African horror film directed by Jaco Bouwer that begins with Gabi and Winston, rangers conducting a survey, who are separated and become lost in the surrounding forest. Winston is attacked by a fungal creature and transformed by the mycelial network that pervades the forest, while Gabi makes an uneasy alliance with a “survivalist” and former scientist, Barend. Through reciprocal rituals of worship with the forest's mycelial network, Barend and his son, Stefan, have been able to survive the fungus's influence. Gabi learns that the fungus is unleashing itself on humanity and witnesses the transformation of human bodies, including Lily, Barend’s wife, who is revealed to be fused with the forest after being incorporated into a tree. The film culminates in Gabi’s death and transformation, while the only survivor of the forest, Stefan, travels to the city and spreads infectious fungal spores. Swanson 11 The events of Gaia portray fungal body horror as a literalization of a biosphere in crisis. The physical transformations of humans into perceived monsters by fungus signify a gradual collapse of human exceptionalism, and the human and non-human forces in the film are shown as unable to remain separate without violence and conflict. Gaia presents its viewing audience with an uneasy assemblage of the aspects of nature in the forest. Assemblages are defined as groupings that can be considered “open-ended gatherings” that “allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them,” allowing for connections to be made, without necessarily predicting the impact or outcomes of connections, as “ways of being are emergent effects of encounters” (Tsing 43). The concept of an assemblage is helpful for examining Gaia’s narrative, which demonstrates grotesque displays to communicate the effects of nature’s reclamation and the increasingly blurred borders the characters experience. While nature is harsh, it is frequently depicted as beautiful through lush landscapes and even the vibrant colors of the fungal transformations of human bodies. The “survivalist” father in the film, Barend, interprets the significance of natural forces through his own lens of grief and his espoused rejection of Western society. Barend believes that he can save himself and his son Stefan from the impending and unavoidable fungal reclamation of the Earth as long as they “defer to Gaia,” a goddess that demands reciprocity from humans, which asserts that all parts of a biosphere in unity must combine to sustain the conditions for life (Duncan 116). It is absolutely imperative to the film’s narrative that Gaia is a feminine entity, and one way this is demonstrated is through the aesthetics of the body horror and death as they affect individuals based on the binary of male/female. The male “outsider,” Winston, suffers a death that is defined by a weakened state of fear and pain, and he begs his companion Gabi to kill him (Gaia 50:30). Winston’s death is presented in a very stark manner, and the film has no heavy use Swanson 12 of soundtrack or overly drawn-out dramatics. Gabi’s death, however, is presented much differently. After Gabi’s death, her body transforms into a bouquet-like structure, with aesthetically arranged fungal growth and ferns (Gaia 1:31:27). Gabi’s body blends into the non-human nature it has merged with, portraying the joining of her female body to the fungal network as harmonious rather than a vengeful reclamation. The revelation of Gabi’s transformation is framed as largely peaceful rather than frightening. This harmonious integration of fungus and the human form is less definitive in Solomon’s Sorrowland, where integration is harsh at first but not all-consuming. While Gabi does not survive the events of the narrative, her more gentle incorporation into the natural world suggests a close connection between women and nature, a connection that can be corrupted and exploited through the harsh treatment of the land. The connections between women and nature have been recently examined in climate activism. In a webinar hosted by Indigenous Climate Action, the connection between women’s bodies and the land is acknowledged as a deep connection that is supported through tradition and belief regarding women’s roles as those who preserve and give life, which is also a role held by the land itself (“Violence Against the Land is Violence Against Women”). Because of this, violence against land (such as the detrimental extraction of the land’s resources) is a direct act of violence against women’s bodies. When “man camps” (temporary housing for predominantly male workers) are built for resource extraction projects such as the construction of pipelines, sexual assault and rape in the surrounding areas drastically increase in number — up to more than two hundred instances of sexual violence a single year in certain locations — and Indigenous women are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than their non-Indigenous counterparts (“Violence Against the Land is Violence Against Women”). Swanson 13 Accompanying the instances of sexual violence, general attitudes about Indigenous women are harsh, as Indigenous women are often viewed by the men working at extraction zones as automatically being in a position of servitude. Women’s bodies generally hold the capability to sustain life through caretaking roles and the potential to bring new life into the world. Any reverence that these roles might be owed is often reduced to a simple measure of value that can be extracted from a woman’s body, much like how resources are extracted from the Earth without any respect for the land. A persistent threat of sexual violence is seen through Gabi’s experience in Gaia. The threat is portrayed in the film through subtext, where even if no assault occurs, threat is consistently present. Gabi relies almost entirely on the assistance of two strangers, specifically two white men, while she herself is a displaced person of color, creating an unbalanced power dynamic. This tension is added to the already existent threat of non-sexual physical violence through fungal infection, which remains a constant and eventually overpowering threat. Gabi’s sense of tension and an underlying threat from the men she is taking shelter with emphasize the colonial advantage that Barend represents (Duncan 120). While an injured Gabi is lying on the floor of Barend’s hut, Stefan tends to her wounds. He examines her body with curiosity, even attempting to peek up her makeshift dress and caressing her leg while she is still unconscious (Gaia 24:13). Stefan does not take further action at this moment, but the scene communicates something important: even if Gabi is never sexually assaulted, the possibility of such an occurrence is embedded in the narrative, demonstrating the idea that even in a dangerous survival scenario, a woman alone with men who are strangers has more to fear than just an outside non-human threat. After Stefan’s dirt-covered fingers are seen grazing Gabi’s skin, it can be seen that Gabi’s limbs have sprouted small fungal growths (Gaia 25:07). The juxtaposition of Swanson 14 two images — Stefan caressing Gabi while she’s unconscious and the fungus growing on her body — is suggestive of a violation against nature itself, with Gabi’s body representing the forest. Barend’s actions later in the film follow a similar trend, one that is much less ambiguous, as he literally integrates himself into the natural surroundings. Barend’s integration and his interactions with the surrounding forest center on his worship rituals and his relationship with Lily, his wife. Barend talks in broad terms to Gabi about how society has waged war on the Earth and, by extension, the entire natural world since the Industrial Revolution, and “she” (nature) is losing the war (Gaia 1:02:40). Gabi is skeptical and sees Barend’s fervor as a symptom of insanity rather than faith. Still, she asks Barend to show her what he is talking about. Gabi, Barend, and Stefan participate in a ritual to deliberately induce visions for Gabi to experience. The series of visions that Gabi perceives have sexual imagery, most unambiguously when she sees Barend, naked and repeatedly thrusting into the ground near a tree while holding tightly to its roots (Gaia 1:10:48). The sexual interactions of Barend with the forest entity that used to be his wife emphasizes that “the iconography of feminised power belies the very logic that undergirds gendered forms of oppression,” and that a controlling patriarchal mindset is still imposed on Lily in her transcended form (Duncan 120). This particular scene also depicts the physical transgression of predetermined borders, and Gabi perceives that what is erotic is directly alongside what is frightening. Boundary crossing continues through to the end of the film as the imposed boundary between the forest and the human-dominated cities is disturbed, as Stefan eventually escapes into the city to transmit the fungal spores and stop society’s war on Earth. This journey is only made possible by the sacrifice of Lily and Gabi, who are both forced to make sacrifices based on feminine roles that are a mixture of sexualized object and mother-figure, which, in Gabi’s case, are imposed on her and Swanson 15 then utilized by her for her temporary survival. The film asserts, then, that even when the boundaries of nature and the vulnerability of humanity are highlighted, social boundaries such as gender roles and the patriarchy may still hold firm. Both Mexican Gothic and Gaia depict ideas that highlight humanity’s vulnerability and serve as warnings of a future where nature’s corruption becomes ungovernable. While both narratives show their protagonists joining the non-human natural world, neither speculates on how society might move forward, heal, or maintain any symbiotic connections to nature beyond the end of each narrative. Noemí flees the corrupted land, escaping with her life and, presumably, hoping to leave the past behind while still holding onto the knowledge she has gained. Gabi dies, becoming fully incorporated into the surrounding forest, losing any human agency she might have had as the natural world consumes her and she becomes integrated into non-human nature. The narratives of both Sorrowland and Green Fuse Burning offer slightly different perspectives, displaying that humans can grow stronger and wiser through non-human nature and that willing integration with natural forces allows a chance for human healing and a way forward in understanding and connection. The Fungal Body’s Connection to History in Sorrowland Rivers Solomon’s novel Sorrowland centers on Vern, a Black fifteen-year-old with albinism who escapes the Blessed Acres of Cain (also known as Cainland), a religious cult. She is able to make her escape just before giving birth to twins fathered by the compound’s leader, and survives in the woods with her two children as a fugitive for four years, during which she realizes her body is changing and progressively developing a bone-like exoskeleton due to the influence of years of fungal experimentation on her and all of the residents of Cainland. After barely escaping capture by those who wish to harm and control her, Vern meets Bridget and Swanson 16 Gogo, who become both allies and a found family to Vern and her two young children. Gogo, Bridget’s niece and a woman of Lakota heritage, practices healing that bridges the gap for individuals who cannot travel to or afford a hospital. For Gogo, this is her “legacy,” a way to carry on the traditions and practices of her grandmother and great-grandmother (Solomon 205). Gogo’s expertise as a healer allows her to see Vern and Vern’s transformed body, integrated with the fungus, with eyes that are uninfluenced by Eurocentric societal conventions for what a “normal body” might look like. Vern expresses her anxiety about her body, how it looks, and what harm it might be capable of as her body is strong and unpredictable due to the exoskeleton. She worries deeply that Gogo will find her repulsive because of her transformation, but this is not the case as Gogo and Vern grow closer. While Vern feels internalized shame that is amplified by her changed and changing body, Gogo makes clear her earnest desire to touch Vern, calling her “distractingly beautiful” (Solomon 218). Vern and Gogo’s first sexual encounter affirms Vern’s identity and her body, which has become essentially changed through integration with non-human nature. Gogo’s enthusiasm is shown to be “perfectly capable of undoing” Vern and her wish to appear stoic and unbreakable (Solomon 219). Vern's connection to the fungus, as well as the fungus’s connection to Gogo through her, positively portrays a fungal integration and a sensual connection that demonstrates Vern’s body as holding the potential for both horror and eroticism. The personal emotional effects of Vern’s fungal body are paired with the ideas of the interspecies invasion of fungal horror in fiction, which returns the human subject to a state of “mere materiality” and serves as an equalizing force between humans and nature (Fitzpatrick 275). An external bodily connection with fungal networks allows for an entanglement with non-human nature that can further be explored through body horror. In Sorrowland, Vern Swanson 17 becomes connected to the history of all the other people infected with the fungus who came before her. This is made possible through the fungal growth that integrates with her body and becomes entwined with her mind and perception. Reading Vern’s physical transformation through a Capitolocene gothic lens, capitalism and societal systems of violence and racism are the forces that propel the characters and their surroundings into “unevenly unfolding collapse” as tensions threaten to separate or harm them (Duncan 128). The Cainland compound, where Vern used to live, was initially curated to be an escape for Black individuals from atrocities and systematic abuse perpetrated by the United States of America against them. However, at the time of Vern’s escape, Cainland functions as an oppressive surveillance state, abusing and experimenting on its residents nightly through the release of fungal spores, without their full knowledge or explicit consent. As the pregnant child bride of the compound’s authoritarian leader, Reverend Sherman, Vern makes a promise to herself and her children that she will fight to maintain autonomy. However, Vern’s body and by extension, her autonomy are not untouched by Cainland's experiments, as she discovers her gradual and unsettling transformation. The “passenger” growing on Vern’s body, a fungal exoskeleton that grows larger and stronger as the novel progresses, draws nutrients from Vern’s bones to strengthen itself and serves as a physical sign that Vern does not have sovereignty over her own body (Solomon 176). It is revealed that, for Cainland’s experiments to succeed in their mission to control their subjects, those experimented on must be “people who the fungus can colonize but not kill,” such as Vern (Solomon 256). These experiments and the way the fungus gradually materializes and integrates with Vern over the course of four years in the narrative showcase many instances of body horror, and when viewed through Nixon’s theory of slow violence paired with the environmental grotesque, indicate larger consequences beyond a Swanson 18 singular body (Wagner 1-2). One of these consequences is the consistent accumulation of violence and bodily harm that Vern witnesses in the past and present. While horror, especially body horror, is often met with pure disgust, provoking the reading audience’s impulse to recoil, the narrative function of body horror, as employed in Sorrowland, is not only frightening but also a symptom of interconnection between the past and present. As well as physical transformation, Vern’s first experiences with visual hallucinations, which she initially calls “hauntings,” are often a simultaneous mix of horror and a tool for understanding and strength. Vern realizes that her connection to the fungus binds her to a historical network, to the pain and trauma of the past, as well as new and unexplored knowledge of sensual experience. The apparitions Vern sees often feed off of her mental and emotional state, and Vern learns to adapt to various recurring appearances. Understanding and accepting her connection to the fungus allows Vern to become gradually stronger and more confident while also connecting to the past in ways that heal her and expand her experience. The fungal horror in Sorrowland emphasizes that humans are not exempt from the influence of the natural world and that there is a “susceptibility of the human body to environmental agency” (Fitzpatrick 265). The unknown future that awaits Vern due to her transformation is unsettling and often isolating. However, the fungal connection Vern has to the world around her is not isolated when examined and accepted for what it actually is, rather than the societally imposed fears and uncertainty that Vern initially views her body through. When Vern’s friend and lover, Gogo, finds that the polypore-like growth on Vern’s back is “fruiting,” this emphasizes and furthers Vern’s status as a hybrid, a distinction she already felt due to her albinism and being intersex. Vern’s body, already crossing lines and borders, becomes more porous and intimately connected to the natural world, and so Vern’s actions are not entirely Swanson 19 her own (Fitzpatrick 263). Vern functions as part of a network, reminiscent of real-life mycorrhizal root networks, which “form an infrastructure of interspecies interconnection, carrying information across the forest” (Tsing 183). Vern’s human consciousness and her ability to connect physically and mentally across space and time elevate her beyond merely human, making her more-than-human, a transformed state that gives her strength rather than weakness, which was intended by Cainland’s psyop plans in order to use and control her. Zakiyyah Iman Jackson1 writes that “historical movement is a more-than-human inter(intra)actional process rather than human-directed sequential action,” because humans can only understand history and ourselves in an obscured and partial way, since the manner in which history is transferred is ultimately “abhuman” (Jackson 180). When a vision of the deceased Reverend Sherman appears to her, Vern learns that those from Cainland who die are preserved through memory, particularly through the fungal network. Their brains, connected by the mycelium, are consumed by the fungus, which transfers their consciousness to “a new plane of existence,” the truth hidden behind hopeful afterlife rhetoric preached to the residents of Cainland (Solomon 229). Vern gains a deeper understanding of history as her body transforms into a category beyond the bounds of typical humanity, becoming more-than-human. Still, the sensory horror of experiencing her visions often impacts her ability to decipher current events from visions or distracts her by inciting distress. One instance of the body horror Vern is subjected to in experiencing visions is when a “plantation mistress” appears to Vern as she is learning to read and practicing aloud (Solomon 244). The woman taunts Vern, ordering her obedience first through means of verbal abuse, 1 Jackson situates the concept of “more-than-human” in the tradition of Black Studies. By centering the experiences of the African diaspora in her work, Jackson investigates how Black expression of lived experience disrupts the violent distinction of Black individuals as abject, an idea upon which Western humanism was built. Jackson’s terminology is included in this paper with this acknowledgement of its origin. Swanson 20 before Vern feels her tongue being grabbed and cut off with metal shears. Though this hateful woman is far removed in history from Vern, her ability to connect to her through the mycelium allows her to perpetrate violence against Vern. The violence of asphyxiating on her own severed tongue and the vivid “taste of salt and iron” as blood fills her mouth is experienced by Vern as if it were an actual physical reality (Solomon 242). Vern's experiences of being tormented by this woman from the past represent a “momentary derangement” in Vern’s perception, due to the mycelium's growing influence and its transforming power over her body (Deckard 175). The act of cutting away Vern’s tongue serves as an attempt to corrupt the mycelium network’s potential for communication and connection. However, the apparition that taunts Vern is a small part of the web that connects those whom the fungus has changed over time. Vern is frequently prompted to contemplate both the beauty and the horror of the world, now that she experiences it differently, and to recognize that being alive contains both frequent harmonious connections and continual forms of opposition. Vern understands her situation and her Cainland predecessors through her fungal connections and visions. She sees the conditions in which many people died and relates to their sorrow and fear. Vern’s connection to history also evokes the ideas of plantation gothic, in which non-human natural forces are an “ally to the insurgency of the oppressed, [...] charged with the consciousness of spirits and ancestors” (Deckard 176). Plantation logic asserts that racial hierarchies and environmental degradation stem from the labor history of plantations, which were “violent in both environmental and human terms” (Deckard 177). Cainland’s practice of infecting its inhabitants with spores can be seen as a way of developing a fungus monoculture through the violation of the bodies of those infected. The result of this biological violence is the deaths of those whose bodies are connected to the mycelium. Vern’s ability to ultimately release Swanson 21 and disperse the spores from her body to revive the dead inhabitants of Cainland after the massacre that was intended to destroy them shows her powerful connection and integration with the forces of nature, defying the powers that seek to corrupt that connection (Solomon 351). While corruption and the fight against further corruption are prominently featured throughout Sorrowland, meaningful, positive, sensual, and erotic connections are portrayed as made possible by Vern’s body being transformed by the fungus. Across time and space, Vern is able to have real positive physical interactions with others, including Peter and Samuel, two lovers who died during the AIDS crisis. Vern is able to relieve the pain of the apparitions, reviving their corpses into animated forms that can move and integrate with other bodies, including her own. Vern is also able to enhance her erotic connection with Gogo by connecting her to Peter and Samuel as well, something that would not be possible without Vern’s enhanced form and perception by means of the fungus. What transpires between the men from the past, Vern, and Gogo (and the fungus that connects them all), constitutes an eco-erotic orgy, fulfilling Vern’s wish to find “a way to plug her brain into Gogo’s directly,” while all four humans and the non-human fungal network that connects them join sexually through a “need to connect and be a part of [a] rebirth of lust and love” (Solomon 295-297). Vern's connection to her partner and to the apparitions of Peter and Samuel allows her to experience pleasure “without guilt and self-loathing, without a streak of squalor,” essentially working in unprogramming the ideologies of Cainland about “goodness” and propriety (Solomon 298). The horror and pleasure Vern experiences through the fungus form a balance essential to understanding both feelings, without shame or stigma. Not all human-felt sensuous or erotic experience connected to nature has to occur as a result of joining with other beings. In fact, simple and solitary endeavors can be considered Swanson 22 equally rewarding, perhaps even more impactful in some instances. For example, Nelson relates a personal story of her memories of eating dirt as a young child, and how those experiences generated “great joy,” connecting her to the landscape and to her own senses (Nelson 230). Like Vern’s experience in Sorrowland, Rita's experiences in Green Fuse Burning are strongly sensory, though they do not involve other humans directly. Rita experiences events that, through intimate connections with nature, elevate the human experience. Rita’s body, internally and externally, communes with the natural world, allowing her to know and be known. Ecological Corruption and Connection in Green Fuse Burning Tiffany Morris’s novella Green Fuse Burning features Rita Francis, a Mi’kmaw painter who is grieving her estranged father’s death. Her girlfriend, Molly, applies to an artist’s residency for Rita without her knowledge, and Rita goes to live in an isolated cabin, surrounded by a disrupted landscape. During her time in the cabin, Rita experiences visual and auditory hallucinations and reconnects with nature in both its beauty and horror. Rita gives in to the bodily experiences she has through the swamp, accepting death, but she is rescued from dying by her brother and given a new sense of the biosphere’s environmental emergency as she displays her paintings in a gallery exhibition. Morris explores body horror as a creative experience in the novella, specifically examining ecological corruption. The physical transformation of Rita, as well as the art she creates, serves as a documentation of an ecological crisis and the interdependence between human and non-human nature. Rita’s surreal transformation illustrates “viscous porosity,” as boundaries between art, life, nature, and death are blurred and disordered (Fitzpatrick 263). Rita feels caged by the “industrial decay” of her daily surroundings, believing her own body is the “pestilential clay of trauma and memory,” and these feelings open her to rebirth and transformation through the natural world (Morris 42). Rita’s experiences and the Swanson 23 transformation of her body are further understood through the lens of the Capitolocene, as she comes to see more clearly how societal systems, particularly the destructive effects of capitalism on the land, have degraded her natural surroundings. The form and structure of the novella provide a specific lens through which to view Rita’s experience and artworks. Each section of the novella begins with a gallery placard-style description of the art, interpreting its aspects and meaning. This structure provides a framework for understanding the meaning behind the horror and illumination Rita experiences. One of her pieces, Un/wound and un/wounding, is described as “the blurring of layers” and “blending of places and temporality,” clearly foreshadowing the relationship between Rita’s experience with the land and her identity (Morris 34). Rita’s final painting in her art exhibition, So Often What Is Thought Invisible Lives Beneath The Skin, is an overarching analysis of her own physical experience with the natural world, including the body horror she encounters throughout the narrative. Rita’s own understanding of the environmental crisis and her connection to nature enable her to be an environmental activist and a voice in support of the interdependence between humans and nature. Rita’s understanding of the beauty and horror of nature allows her to begin healing her own trauma and to understand how humanity and nature might also heal, and even work to heal each other. The presentation of Rita’s artwork is deeply connected to the idea of healing, reevaluating devalued land, and exploring its connection to Rita’s identity as an Indigenous woman. Rita explores the natural world through her body, surrounded only by the agitated nature around her. Rita senses “the violence of displacement” in the land and the pull to create an artpiece of the Lichen Woman, a figure that is “simultaneously a part of the landscape and completely alien to it” (Morris 30). The impression of the land on Rita prompts her to use materials such as soil, Swanson 24 leaves, sticks, and moss, incorporating them into human-made artistic artifacts. Nature is shown to demand a reciprocal relationship from Rita. This is demonstrated for the first time when Rita trips and falls while walking around the pond adjacent to the cabin, the impact of the fall cutting open her hands and giving Rita “faithless stigmata,” bleeding wounds that make her “more open, more vulnerable, and knowable, and invadable” (Morris 36). The stigmata-like wounds mark Rita’s body as sacrificial and foreshadow her prophet-like experiences, which lead to her advocacy for the natural world through her art. Rita’s initial resistance toward the land that surrounds her mirrors common attitudes toward nature labeled as wasteland, a concept that examines the value of “spaces deemed unworthy of healing” by those who have damaged the land (Lee 1). Cree scholar Erica Violet Lee, who conceptualized the idea of the wasteland, writes that the method of providing care to oneself and others means “gathering enough love to turn devastation into mourning and then, maybe, turn that mourning into hope,” which is what Rita begins to learn throughout her personal experience (Lee 1). Rita acknowledges that the swampland areas she is visiting are undesirable to real estate developers and do not initially appear to be ideal places for an artistic residence. Throughout the novella, Rita begins to feel kinship with the land, which helps heal the wasteland within her, the feelings of grief and trauma that have made her feel unvaluable and beyond healing. Rita’s incorporation into nature is realized through her own experience of body horror, an unignorable communication from the nature surrounding her, which blurs the lines of reality and unreality as well as the lines of human and non-human. One way Rita’s experience blurs reality is through her encounters with the Lichen Woman, a figure whose presence is so unreal that Rita thinks she must be hallucinating when she first sees her (Morris 72). The woman figure she sees is depicted as covered in fungus, and Swanson 25 “dripping decay from her tendrils,” embodying the forces of growth and decay in the natural world outside of the cabin (Morris 71). The Lichen Woman suggests an ancient force that contradicts the boundaries of reality that society has established. Her tendrils are reminiscent of monstrous tentacles, entangling plant and human aspects into a “multi-limbed embroilment” that demonstrates the vulnerable nature of the human body and its ability for grotesque transformation (Fitzpatrick 277). While the Lichen Woman and her influence are a source of horror for Rita, the experience also serves as a path to new perspectives and healing. The Lichen Woman demonstrates the ability for life to overcome death, while simultaneously embodying “the maggot rot of decomposition cycled into new existence,” a multifaceted being that is neither completely benevolent nor completely malignant (Morris 79). The Lichen Woman embodies the land itself, both its corrupted and damaged aspects and its regenerative ones, as her “existence was like all those dead things had crawled out from death’s hidden corners,” and the dead things include the interaction of all life (Morris 79). Rita's illuminating discovery of the Lichen Woman’s significance is directly contrasted with the grotesque body horror incorporation of frogs into her own body, a testament to the permeability of humans and the multifaceted experiences of the connections between human and non-human nature. Rita feels the sensation of frogs invading her body, and they crowd her throat and mouth, blocking her airway and provoking her to think, with new empathy, about what her father’s dying moments might have felt like (Morris 78). While initially unpleasant, Rita’s body being proven as permeable is an intellectually enlightening experience, relieving pain, healing grief, and giving her new pleasure in her life as an individual, artist, and activist. The body horror, as it is written within the narrative, is not sensationalized for shock value, allowing it to Swanson 26 be seen more plainly as a fact of Rita’s experience rather than a tactic to make the scenes scary or repulsive. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes about how Indigenous Nishnaabeg values and the ways they oppose colonial systems of education and colonial violence, and how they have historically been devalued. Rita’s Mi’kmaw identity is not included in Simpson’s nation-specific analysis, but the insights Simpson offers about land and land as pedagogy strongly resonate across Indigenous studies. In her analysis, Simpson asserts that theory and the practice of theoretical thinking are both continual processes, present within peoples and families within the Nishnaabeg culture, generated for the pursuit of “contextual and relational” meaning and spiritual and emotional significance (Simpson 7). In Green Fuse Burning, Rita learns and generates meaning through her own experience, which she then transfers to her art. Rita comes to acknowledge that grief (and, by extension, pain) is the “effluvium of our experience,” part of human life, a reminder that all humans are inherently connected to nature and that all humans will die (Morris 96). Rita uses her new understanding of life and death to understand her personal trauma, including the death of her father. Her knowledge also allows her to understand the trauma of the natural world, which has been abused and devalued by humans and stripped of its resources. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub describe art as a “precocious mode of witnessing,” meaning it often accesses and reveals a difficult and traumatic reality before the conscious mind can find words to describe it (Felman and Laub xx). Rita’s artwork can be considered a form of surreal visual witnessing. Through her art, Rita expresses what may be inexpressible in words and shares her knowledge through her lived experience, translated into her artwork. Rita’s artworks purposefully “cajole, disturb, and interrogate the viewer,” allowing the viewer to see both Swanson 27 “alienation and intimacy” in a new light (Morris 12-13). Living through her own experience with the forces of nature, Rita is able to communicate to others the wisdom she gains and the horror and beauty she has experienced firsthand. At Rita’s gallery opening, she shares her experience of creating and engaging intimately with art and nature, which allows her to stop pretending she is immune to death, because “pretending is part of what makes each loss devastate us so totally” (Morris 96). Simpson’s analysis agrees with this sentiment, that “existence is ultimately dependent upon intimate relationships of reciprocity, humility, honesty and respect with all elements of creation, including plants and [non-human] animals,” an understanding that is achieved through accepting that there is both pain and pleasure, and things to be both gained and lost (Simpson 9-10). Rita can only share what she knows, but every person’s own experience is useful and valuable, and for every human to have the same life experience would be nonsensical and antithetical to the assemblage of diversity that exists to be continually upheld (Simpson 10). Ultimately, the body horror experiences that Rita goes through are ways of learning and gaining new knowledge that would be impossible to attain without integration with non-human nature. Reframing and Reevaluating Body Horror In the fiction analyzed in this paper, body horror could be interpreted as a purely one-dimensional, shock-and-disgust-inducing horror element. However, viewing the body horror in these narratives as only repulsive reinforces the idea of people as “depleted, ruined, and hopeless” in the face of crisis (Tuck 409). This is particularly true regarding individuals and groups who have faced systemic oppression and colonial violence. In her theory of desire-based narratives, Eve Tuck argues that desire is about creating a heightened experience in the present through engagement with the past and the future, and that this mindset is “integral to our Swanson 28 humanness” (Tuck 417). Reading ecohorror and ecogothic narratives not only through destruction but also through desire reveals meaningful transformations and connections to human and non-human nature. The aesthetics of body horror allow for an unsettled perception that highlights the spectrum of human experience, and ecological body horror allows for shifts in thinking about human connection to the natural world. The ways this connection is portrayed, as shown in my analysis, differ across fictional works. While Mexican Gothic and Gaia can be viewed as less optimistic than the other two fictional works examined in this paper, the body horror employed in the narratives still works to decenter Eurocentric views and reevaluate the inherent connection between human and non-human nature and the transformative events that transpire, even through corruption. Sorrowland shows a vivid depiction of bodily transformation and violence, and the impact that it has on Vern and those close to her. Gogo views Vern’s body as a miracle, as erotic and desirable. What Vern expects to be disgusting to others is a force for desire and protection. The expression of grief and external pain in Green Fuse Burning serves as a means of regeneration and integration with non-human nature, an artistically fruitful experience, and, given Rita’s openness toward the Lichen Woman and the other nature surrounding her, a desire-driven experience. These fictional narratives offer nontraditional perspectives, arising from the depiction of body horror and the transgression of boundaries. Eurocentric, Western thinking often teaches human exceptionalism, that not only are humans more valuable than non-humans, but also that humans have the ability and right to exert agency to dominate the natural world. Body horror removes agency and unsettles the normative experience of living in a human body. Fictional use of body horror can reconfigure how we think about non-human nature and our relationship to it, Swanson 29 how we think about ourselves and our relationship to the past, and how we might exist in connection to nature in the future. Swanson 30 Works Cited Deckard, Sharae. "Ecogothic." Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, edited by Maisha Wester and Xavier Aldana Reyes, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 174–88. Duncan, Rebecca. "Anthropocene Gothic, Capitalocene Gothic: The Politics of Ecohorror." 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