Abstract
This chapter considers two texts, Ling Ma’s 2018 novel Severance and the HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2023) as emblematic of a new relationship to the global situation in our post-pandemic moment. Focusing specifically on rhizomic networks and the fungal nature of various types of connection, it suggests that both works offer us macro and micro-political understandings that showcase the sublime and complex difficulties we face when attempting to integrate into a world that is moving at such great pace. While offering a word of caution about some of these emerging fungal networks in areas like economics and disinformation, it ends with a reflection on the hope we might draw from new possibilities of connection and collaboration that the pandemic has, ultimately, forced upon us.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown |
Subtitle of host publication | Entangled Futurities |
Editors | Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, Conrad Scott |
Chapter | 4 |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 7 Nov 2023 |
Keywords
- Utopia
- Dystopia
- Zombie
- The Last of Us
- Severance
- Pandemic
- COVID-19
- Rhizome