(Un/re)making worlds

How do we conceptualise the world ‘out there’? Relationality, broadly speaking, assumes a fundamental ‘universe of relatedness’, where ‘all are related to all, [and] there is nothing that is not related’.Footnote ³ This ontological perspective challenges the Western, Newtonian view of the cosmos as composed of atomised ‘things’, instead foregrounding the interdependence and interconnectedness of all existence. Relational thinking holds the kinetic capacity to dismantle dominant onto-epistemologies and methodologies rooted in isolation, manipulation, and control.Footnote ⁴ By emphasising qualities such as process orientation, holism, and collectivism, relationality radically confronts the methodological assumptions that favour output orientation, atomism, and individualism as hallmarks of legitimacy within Western epistemologies.Footnote ⁵ A gradual yet profound flow of relational thinking into the academy has sparked what might be called a multidisciplinary ‘relational reckoning’.Footnote ⁶ This movement is evident across the social sciences and beyond, permeating fields such as sustainability science,Footnote ⁷ economic geography,Footnote ⁸ psychoanalysis,Footnote ⁹ psychotherapy,Footnote ¹⁰ bioethics,Footnote ¹¹ biosemiotics,Footnote ¹² tourism studies,Footnote ¹³ quantum physics,Footnote ¹⁴ and even mathematics by way of ethnomathematics and cosmotechnics.Footnote ¹⁵ International Relations, too, is facing its own ‘relational turn’, driven by a decades-long rise in scholarship that calls for a reimagining of the ‘international’ and a recentring of relations within the field.Footnote ¹⁶ This wave of scholarship challenges the discipline’s foundational premises, offering alternative ways of understanding and engaging the global through a relational lens.Footnote ¹⁷

Though IR has grappled with questions of epistemicide, epistemic violence, and ontological imperialism,Footnote ¹⁸ discussions of cosmological registers – the ways entire worldviews shape our understanding of existence and knowledge – remain largely absent from the field.Footnote ¹⁹ Despite this neglect, the discipline ‘inadvertently accepts a set of implicit cosmological assumptions as its backdrop’ and thus structures its thinking and practices around ‘increasingly problematic cosmological assumptions which derive from unacknowledged, often theological, and almost always unscrutinized, sources’.Footnote ²⁰ Following Kurki’s call to ‘think anew’, this paper engages with relational ontologies and cosmovisions to explore how they challenge the normative foundations of IR. Kurki is clear, however, that this invitation to think anew should not be mistaken for a claim to originality.Footnote ²¹ What is ‘new’ here does not mark a rupture but signals a shift already underway across the sciences and humanities, in changing power relations, and in ongoing efforts to decolonise conceptual frameworks. This work remains attentive to the risks of homogenising or appropriating relational and cosmological perspectives, foregrounding their specificity and situated contributions to thinking otherwise. It emphasises the transformative textures of cosmovisions that resist Western, anthropocentric universalism, attending to their implications for relational ethics, methodology, and world-making. Turning to more-than-human worlds, the analysis draws on the symbiotic and decomposing processes of fungal life to develop tools for navigating the politics of worlding within the pluriverse. As agents of both decay and renewal, fungi offer a material and metaphorical lens for rethinking how relational ties sustain, dissolve, and transform worlds – disrupting hierarchical and anthropocentric assumptions that continue to shape dominant modes of thought in IR. By embracing the hidden networks and interdependencies of fungal life, we can glean insights into our own realities while simultaneously deteriorating the foundations that bind us to normative, extractive frameworks. This dual capacity for decomposition and regeneration positions fungi as not just tools of analysis but also as participants in a more ethical, pluriversal politics.

Law’s articulation of the One-World World (OWW)Footnote ²² provides a critical foundation for this discussion. De la Cadena and Blaser describe the OWW as ‘a world that has granted itself the right to assimilate all other worlds’, presenting itself as exclusive while foreclosing possibilities beyond its constructed limits.Footnote ²³ Rooted in the logics of ‘self-sealing one-world metaphysics’,Footnote ²⁴ the OWW denies Other(ed) relations, insisting on a reality constituted by ‘atomised’ and isolated ‘things’.Footnote ²⁵ This ‘ontological parochialism’,Footnote ²⁶ central to Western thought, universalises European modernity as the singular ‘real’ way of knowing, being, and enacting. By elevating this framework as the sole valid epistemology, the OWW creates conditions for epistemic and material violence.Footnote ²⁷ It is within and against this context that the scholars engaged here imagine and enact alternatives.

Efforts to challenge the cosmological boundaries of positivist modernity have emerged through methodologies that position relationships and processes, rather than sedimented actors or ‘things’, as the fundamental unit of reality. Social network analysis, for instance, ‘permits the investigation and measurement of network structures – emergent properties of persistent patterns of relations among agents that can define, enable, and constrain those agents’.Footnote ²⁸ This approach emphasises the interdependence of relations and processes, which dynamically interact with individual choices to produce ‘emergent and unintended structures’ whose properties may ‘generalize across levels of analysis’.Footnote ²⁹ However, despite its promise of centring relationships, network theory has been criticised for falling short of true relationalism. As Erikson observes:

Relationalism foregrounds intersubjectivity, emphasising the situated and dynamic nature of meaning and experience while rejecting essentialism and a priori categories.Footnote ³¹ Critics argue, however, that much of mainstream ‘relationalist’ scholarship ultimately fails to escape the ontology of ‘agents and structures as “things” “out there”’.Footnote ³²

Latour has significantly contributed to relational thought, particularly through his conceptualisation(s) of actor-network theory (ANT) and attempts to move beyond the limitations of ocular-centrism and empiricism,Footnote ³³ acknowledging these processes as insufficient for understanding the complexity of relations. Blaser acknowledges Latour’s earlier work as a ‘useful beginning’,Footnote ³⁴ particularly in the enunciation of relational politics through the notion of the ‘political circle’, described as ‘transforming the several into one and subsequently, through a process of retransformation, of the one into several’.Footnote ³⁵ However, Blaser critiques this framework for falling short, noting that the ‘political circle’ Latour grapples with is not truly a circle but a figure eight, a shape that reflects a process of ontological eversion and the holographic nature of relational politics:

Latour’s omission of such perspectives is emblematic of broader critiques levied against his work, particularly from decolonial and Indigenous scholars. Todd provides a scathing account of Latour’s failure to engage with Indigenous cosmologies, noting disappointment in his lack of acknowledgement for millennia of Indigenous knowledge systems that emphasise relationality, sentience, and cosmological interdependence.Footnote ³⁷ This lack of engagement, Todd argues, demonstrates how Latour’s work remains entrenched in Western epistemologies, cleaving relationality from Indigenous contexts that embody it: ‘I was just another inconvenient Indigenous body in a room full of people excited to hear a white guy talk around themes shared in Indigenous thought without giving Indigenous people credit or a nod.’Footnote ³⁸ Querejazu adds to this critique, situating Latour’s work within a ‘stream of rupture’ that challenges the modernist dualisms of nature/culture and subject/object but noting its fundamental limitations.Footnote ³⁹ While Latour frames relations as a process of unification and elimination of limits, many Indigenous cosmologies view interconnection as sufficient without necessitating full unification. As Querejazu explains, ‘The pluriverse is not necessarily characterized by unification of what has been separated; interconnections can be enough. Worlds and realms interact constantly but exist on their own.’Footnote ⁴⁰ This divergence re-emphasises Latour’s Eurocentric framing of relationality, which often excludes or marginalises non-Western ways of knowing, embodying what Liboiron might refer to as ‘colonial science’.Footnote ⁴¹ While this paper references Indigenous cosmologies to think through relationality otherwise, it does so with care: these cosmologies are not monolithic, and the use of such terms risks flattening distinct epistemologies, practices, and worldviews. What is emphasised here is a recurring orientation towards relation.

Watts further critiques Latour’s ANT for failing to adequately account for the agency of the more-than-human.Footnote ⁴² While ANT equalises agency between humans and non-humans, Watts argues that this framework remains embedded within a Western epistemological paradigm that subtly reasserts human ownership and control over non-human entities. As Watts notes, even as ANT incorporates elements like soil or dirt into relational networks, these are relegated to passive players in a system still dominated by human-centric understandings:

These critiques illustrate the ways in which Latour’s work, while groundbreaking in its challenge to atomistic thought, remains reliant on Western epistemologies and lacks engagement with Indigenous knowledge systems, preventing ANT from fully realising a decolonial, relational framework capable of world-building beyond the limits of Eurocentric modernity. Watts’s discussion of ANT invites a critical reconsideration of how relational frameworks can meaningfully account for the agency of the more-than-human, while the elucidation of ‘Place-Thought’ emphasises that non-human entities are not merely passive objects or metaphors within human networks but are animate, agentic, and co-constitutive of the relational fabric of their existence. Drawing upon Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee traditions, Watts reminds us that places think, act, and influence; they are not inert backdrops for human action but are enmeshed in reciprocal, animate relationships. This recognition challenges Latour’s ANT, which, while equalising agency between human and non-human elements, still operates within an epistemological paradigm that privileges human interpretations of agency and control.

By taking seriously the agency of the more-than-human, Watts’s insights allow us to reframe the fungal framework not as an extractive metaphor but as a lens for engaging with the active, intentional processes of world-building performed by non-human actors. Watts’s insistence on the agency of the more-than-human pushes us towards a necessary reframing of relationality: one that demands methodological humility and recognises non-human actors as vital, intentional participants in world-making. For Watts, entities such as soil are not inert objects awaiting human interpretation; they are collaborators, actively shaping and reshaping the conditions of existence. This recognition requires us to step towards a deeper engagement with the processes these entities enact – processes like decomposition, symbiosis, and renewal, which not only sustain ecosystems but also transform them. In this sense, the more-than-human become something much more than symbols: they are agents of relationality, weaving together worlds through acts of care and decay. Crucially, Watts’s insights also challenge us to cultivate an approach that holds space for specificity, one that resists flattening the diverse ways that more-than-human agency manifests across different cosmologies. This is not a call to appropriate Indigenous thought, but to consider how such perspectives can unsettle and deepen understandings of relational politics. It is a reminder that working with a pluriversal ethics requires humility, not only in the face of human difference but also in our encounters with the unintelligible agencies of non-human collaborators. This ethos serves as a foundation for engaging with more-than-humans as participants in the ongoing, unpredictable work of worlding. These reflections on more-than-human agency, grounded in Watts’s critique of extractive tendencies, help set the stage for engaging with other conceptual frameworks – such as Latour’s rethinking of Gaia – which grapples with the entangled dynamics of relationality and the epistemic limits of modernity.Footnote ⁴⁴

Latour’s Facing Gaia represents a significant departure from his earlier actor-network theory, seeking to reframe our understanding of the Earth as an agentic assemblage rather than a static backdrop for human action. Gaia, in Latour’s vision, is not a providential force orchestrating life on Earth but a dynamic, interdependent entity that defies the totalising impulses of modernity. By challenging the Western modernist dichotomy of nature and culture, Latour proposes a framework that resists unification and acknowledges the multiplicity of Earth’s processes. However, while Latour’s Gaia offers a compelling challenge to modernist epistemologies, it arguably retains a form of anthropocentrism: non-human agency is acknowledged primarily through human recognition and representation. This limitation has been noted more broadly in critiques of the ontological turn, which question the Eurocentric and colonial residues in dominant relational frameworks.Footnote ⁴⁵ Nonetheless, Latour’s contributions remain valuable as a catalyst for rupturing dominant paradigms and opening space for more inclusive and transformative approaches to relational thinking in (and beyond) IR.

Another avenue through which scholars have sought to think relationally within the social sciences is via quantum theory, particularly its adaptation in quantum IR. These approaches draw theoretical perspectives from physics to integrate tenets of quantum mechanics into the social sciences, emphasising interconnectedness, uncertainty, fluidity, entanglement, and non-linearity.Footnote ⁴⁶ Quantum theory arrives in International Relations from a natural science paradigm, challenging the adequacy of Newtonian frameworks for understanding the complexities of our world(s).Footnote ⁴⁷ Within social-scientific quantum theory, a diversity of approaches – such as the quantum mind approach, the quantum reasoning approach, and the quantum metaphor approach – claim varying degrees of transferability and applicability to the social sciences.Footnote ⁴⁸ Barad’s agential realism is particularly significant here, as it highlights how relations are not simply abstract connections but material and ethical entanglements that shape the very fabric of reality.Footnote ⁴⁹ Unlike universalist tendencies within some quantum IR frameworks, which aim to ‘regain some form of scientific universalism in the social sciences’,Footnote ⁵⁰ Barad’s approach resists the impulse to produce overarching truths. Instead, Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemology Footnote ⁵¹ emphasises the inseparability of being, knowing, and acting, grounding quantum relationality in an accountability to the worlds it seeks to describe. This contrasts sharply with the apolitical stance critiqued by Sjoberg, who points out that quantum IR replicates ontological commitments often untethered from the explicit political imperatives of feminist and queer approaches.Footnote ⁵²

While Barad’s framework provides a powerful alternative to Newtonian paradigms, the broader pursuit of quantum universalism remains troubling. My initial discomfort with the quantum endeavour stems from its proposition to ‘fill epistemic vacuums’Footnote ⁵³ within interpretive approaches, an ambition that parallels Latour’s contributions yet carries profound risks. As SmithFootnote ⁵⁴ and EscobarFootnote ⁵⁵ caution, universalisms – particularly those disguised as methodological objectivity – are predisposed to generating conditions of violence and othering. In the absence of internal normative commitments, these frameworks risk perpetuating the legacies of colonialism by advancing a project of imperialism masked as apolitical science. This is not to suggest that quantum IR is destined to replicate these harms, but rather to highlight its potential to do so, especially when juxtaposed with feminist, queer, and decolonial approaches. These critical perspectives not only share many of the conclusions of quantum IR but also embed ethical and normative commitments, prioritise pluralism, and centre the voices of subalternity. As such, I remain committed to engaging with these critical approaches as a means of exploring relationality while exercising caution towards reproducing violent and assimilationist tendencies of universalist frameworks.

Other approaches emphasise a plurality of cosmological worlds rather than a single relational world or world-of-relations. John Law’s concept of the fractiverse offers one such framework, grappling with plurality at ontological and beyond-ontological registers:

Law’s fractiverse seeks to radically engage with difference and the existence of alternative ways of worlding. In doing so, it pushes beyond the constraints of the OWW. However, despite this radical departure, the fractiverse appears still bound to notions of sedimentation and universalisation. Ingold critiques the fractiverse for focusing on ontologies rather than ontogenies (concerned with ‘generations’ of being rather than with ‘philosophies’ of being), suggesting that Law’s realities, while plural, have ‘already fallen out from the matrices of their generation’.Footnote ⁵⁷ This critique points to a limitation: while the fractiverse avoids the universalism of the OWW, it risks sedimenting its own foundational logic – the assertion that there is ‘no overarching logic’. In attempting to deconstruct ‘all the way down’, the fractiverse inadvertently establishes a principle of relationality that governs what does and does not belong in relational existence. This contradiction raises critical questions, particularly within relational cosmologies. Does this tendency towards radical deconstruction enable relativism? Does it ‘assume to know’ the nature of relational cosmologies, potentially isolating realities and limiting possibilities for intelligibility, communication, or transformation? McKeown extends this critique, arguing that ‘isolating these realities within their own world produces the conditions for a fractiverse in which communication is negated and possibilities for learning and transformation are left unexplored’.Footnote ⁵⁸ In seeking to address plurality, perhaps the fractiverse risks creating new boundaries that constrain the very possibilities it seeks to open.

While Law engages with ongoing discussions of pluriversality in his conceptualisation of the fractiverse, he introduces a distinct term without explicitly articulating the rationale behind this choice or clarifying its divergence from existing frameworks. This lack of clarity has prompted others to draw comparisons, emphasising key distinctions between the fractiverse and the pluriverse. For instance, Ingold contrasts the two by highlighting the pluriverse’s emphasis on relational emergence:

Ingold’s interpretation positions pluriversality as a fundamentally emergent, interconnected process, distinct from the fractiverse’s focus on discrete enactments strung together by external connections. This distinction suggests that the fractiverse remains symptomatic of the Western context from which it emerges. While it offers valuable insights for navigating relational worlds, it holds onto definitions of reality and boundaries of ‘worlding’ that may inadvertently limit its utility in fostering cross-cosmological engagement. Despite these critiques, the fractiverse remains a complementary and generative concept for thinking through relational realities and can benefit discussions of pluralism when integrated thoughtfully with pluriversal approaches.

Pluriversality is a cosmological being/commitment that has been widely enacted and manifested, particularly within decolonial thought, literature, and scholarship and across diverse Indigenous ways of knowing/being. Unlike frameworks that seek to construct or manifest an alternative to the OWW, pluriversality can be conceptualised as something that has always existed, despite varying levels of denial, silencing, and subjugation by the myth of a singular world imposed by Western liberal modernity. It is a reality to be nurtured/recovered/recognised without becoming ‘fixed or given’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Similar to the fractiverse, pluriversal perspectives acknowledge ontological multiplicity, yet press further by assuming a global context shaped by the entanglement of distinct cosmologies. While Law writes of overlapping or intersecting worlds,Footnote ⁶¹ entanglement here gestures more explicitly to the pluriversal need to coexist with complexity and chaos,Footnote ⁶² further distinguishing the behaviour of the pluriverse from that of the fractiverse. This kind of entanglement emphasises encounters among multiple worlds as distinct enactments, shaped by variations in time-space, language, and cosmovision. As Fitzgerald articulates:

Unlike the fractiverse, which often emphasises disconnection and radical difference, pluriversality navigates the complexities of incommensurability without forsaking the possibility of communication and sharedness.

Sharedness in the pluriverse is not a concession to universalism, but rather an acknowledgement of interdependence. It is a recognition that realities, while distinct, often overlap and influence one another through encounters that are material, relational, and situated. These encounters do not erase the ontological weight of difference but instead embrace its productive tensions. Fitzgerald captures this dynamic, noting that within the pluriverse, ‘there are different collective worlding practices that enact different worlds, and these worlds are sometimes in excess of each other’.Footnote ⁶⁴ This excess is key: it points to how distinct worlds may intersect, clash, or even overflow one another without being reduced to a single framework. In this sense, the pluriverse is a space where metaphysical incommensurability is not a barrier to engagement but an invitation to relationality on (seemingly) entropic terms. From a methodological perspective, this allows for the interconnection of realities, enabling worlds to communicate and transform without subsuming or homogenising one another. Normatively, it establishes/reinforces an ethics of care and worlding that acknowledges power relations and the enduring legacies of colonial violence. As Querejazu explains, ‘For the reappearance of the pluriverse, it is necessary to accept that ontologies are incommensurable, but can be partially interconnected … This is not a one way to relativism, but an invitation to think incommensurability in relational terms.’Footnote ⁶⁵ Here, partial interconnections honour the integrity of each world while fostering conditions for mutual influence and ethical accountability.

Crucially, pluriversal worldings remain open to cosmological possibilities in which agency or subjectivity extend beyond the human to encompass more-than-human/spiritual beings. These beings, interconnected through relational practices, shape political and social realities in ways that challenge the compartmentalisation of the natural, spiritual, and political realms characteristic of Western thought. Attempting to define the pluriverse in static terms would enact a kind of epistemic violence, arresting its fluid and relational nature. Instead, it may be more fruitful to articulate what the pluriverse is not, using distinctions to illuminate its commitments and guard against its co-optation into universalist or extractive frameworks. These distinctions are essential for advancing a decolonial praxis that recognises the pluriverse’s capacity to challenge the epistemic and material legacies of colonialism while fostering spaces for coexistence and transformation. As Querejazu again reminds us:

By taking incommensurability as relational rather than isolating, the pluriverse offers a counterpoint to modernity’s erasures and assimilations. It centres the persistence of entangled worlds – distinct, interconnected, and sometimes in excess of each other. Pluriversality, then, does not simply oppose the OWW; it is an active force that works within, beyond, and against it, decomposing its rigid foundations by exposing the universalising myths and epistemological closures that underpin much of modern IR. Through its emphasis on ontological multiplicity, incommensurability, and relationality, the pluriverse corrodes and decomposes self-sealing logics of the OWW, revealing the fractures in its claims of singularity and coherence. This process of ‘rotting’ not only destabilises the OWW’s dominance but also nourishes ruptures within the discipline itself, creating fertile ground for the emergence of new frameworks, methodologies, and commitments that better reflect the complexity and plurality of our interconnected worlds.

As a note: it is critical to acknowledge that the decomposition of the OWW has not solely been catalysed by interventions within the academy. Long before these conversations entered the lexicon of (dominant) IR, they were being actively enacted, embodied, and defended by communities resisting epistemic and material violences of colonialism. Relational pluralism has been practised since the genesis of the OWW, particularly within and across diverse Indigenous cosmologies, as forms of resistance and persistence against the homogenising forces of the OWW. As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui notes, these norms have taken on a multiplicity of forms, operating as both modes of survival and as direct challenges to the universalising logics of modernity.Footnote ⁶⁷ This recognition is paramount: the ‘rot’ of the OWW is (and has been) deeply entangled with the long histories of struggle against colonialism and its violent attempts to impose a singular worldview. These relationalities in context highlight the ongoing presence of pluriversality, even as it has been silenced or subjugated within dominant frameworks. As such, the pluriverse is not merely an alternative to the OWW; it is also a testament to the persistence of worlds that have always existed in defiance of one-worldisms. Understanding the pluriverse as a site of generative decay means acknowledging that much of this ‘rot’ has already been happening – powerfully – through the resistances and practices of those communities who have refused to be subsumed. From this vantage point, the task becomes one of listening to and learning from these histories of relationality and resistance, not as artefacts to be studied but as living practices that nourish the decomposition of the OWW. These relationalities invite us to engage with the pluriverse not as a concept to be constructed but as a being to be encountered on its own terms, an ongoing process of worlding that has long defied universalist ambitions.

As such, the decomposition of the OWW is not a future project but a process already underway, enacted through the enduring resistances and relationalities of those who have defied its universalist ambitions. The OWW is not merely decaying but rather decomposing in the very process of its unravelling. Decay is not a passive state of decline, nor is it something that simply happens to a system when it has exhausted itself. It is an active, ongoing process in which pluriversal relations unsettle, corrode, and metabolise the OWW’s epistemic and material foundations. Decomposition is not something that follows decay; it is what decay is. To decay is to enter into new relations, to be broken down and redistributed into configurations that exceed the limits of what came before. There is no waiting period between the collapse of one world and the emergence of another. Pluriversality does not stand outside of decay, observing the OWW’s dissolution from a safe distance. It is inside the process, accelerating it, interfering in it, ensuring that what is breaking down does not remain in a state of arrested ruin but instead becomes otherwise. Decomposition is not a secondary act of reworking the remains of a broken system; it is the very mechanism through which its undoing takes place. There is no pure destruction here, no simple negation – only transformation in motion. To think fungally is to recognise that decay is never inert, never an end point, never just collapse. The moment something begins to rot, it is already being metabolised by the relations around it, already feeding new possibilities, already becoming something other than itself. Pluriversality does not only weaken the OWW; it digests it, repurposes its residues and ruins into conditions for alternative worldings. Decay is decomposition, and decomposition is the ongoing work of making otherwise.

Pluriversal relations, Indigenous cosmologies, and alternative world-making practices are not passive witnesses to OWW’s decline; they are the forces accelerating its decomposition. But this process is neither inevitable nor linear. The OWW endures precisely because of its ability to co-opt and neutralise alternative knowledges, folding resistance into its own logic and repackaging it as reform. Thus, decomposition must be nourished through relational praxis, ethical worlding, and vigilance against recuperation. The challenge is not simply to unmake but to ensure that what emerges is not absorbed back into the extractive circuits of modernity Yet, as these worlds interact, collide, and persist, they remain unintelligible to frameworks that demand cohesion or resolution. This unintelligibility is not a limitation but a strength, underscoring the epistemic humility required to engage with a pluriverse of incommensurable worlds. How, then, can we approach the pluriverse in ways that resist the extractive impulses of colonial knowledge systems while embracing its inherent unknowability and dynamism?

The methodological magic of mushrooms

I had struggled to write this piece for months, trying (and failing) to wrap my head around relational cosmology and pluriversal worldings in a way that would enable me to somehow discuss or analyse these messy, kinetic, slippery entanglements. Writing this piece has been a process of grappling with relational cosmology and pluriversal worldings – concepts that resist tidy articulation and analysis. Their unintelligibility (to me) and complexity left me searching for a way to think about them more clearly. One day, on a break from writing, I stumbled upon the documentary Fantastic Fungi,Footnote ⁶⁹ which explores the ‘magical world of fungi, from mushrooms that clear oil spills to underground fungal networks that help trees communicate’. Captivated, I watched as the film illuminated how mushrooms – visible fruiting bodies of vast, hidden fungal networks – offer glimpses into otherwise-invisible webs of life, connection, and care. The film begins with an evocative voiceover:

Fungi are indeed ancient and enigmatic, with evidence suggesting that they are among the oldest known living organisms.Footnote ⁷¹ They also hold the title of the largest living organism, exemplified by the Armillaria ostoyae, or ‘humongous fungus’, which spans 2,384 acres of Oregon’s Blue Mountains – an area equivalent to about 1,600 America football fields.Footnote ⁷² Despite their ubiquity, fungi remain elusive, with estimates of species ranging from 2.2 million to over 13 million, far exceeding the roughly 150,000 species currently identified.Footnote ⁷³ The kingdom of fungi, with its temporal, spatial, and scalar enigmas, challenges our understanding of life itself. But how do these mysteries – these fleeting glimpses of relational networks and hidden worlds – speak to the study of relationality and pluriversality in global politics? And, additionally, why am I at all qualified to articulate a fungal framework?

Attending first to the latter, I must acknowledge that I am no expert on mushrooms, fungi, or mycology. There are many others – mycophiles, ecologists, and expansively diverse Indigenous communities from around the globe who are closer companions to fungi than I could ever claim to be, and their knowledge can certainly not be entirely captured here. For some, this companionship is deeply rooted in lived practice and cultural cosmologies that have long engaged with the relational lessons of fungi in ways that far exceed the metaphorical or analytical. These communities have cultivated relationships of care, humility, and reciprocity with fungi that offer insights far beyond my own, emphasising the importance of remembering that unintelligibility itself ought not be universalised. Registers of what counts as legible or knowable are shaped by the webs of relation and worldings we move through; what feels opaque to some may be already known, already enacted elsewhere. Though this paper speaks to ‘dominant IR’, relationality and pluriversality have long been lived, studied, and struggled for by marginalised thinkers and communities both within and beyond the academy. My aim here, however, has been less about making claims to expertise and more about confronting the dominant cosmologies of International Relations, using a fungal framework to open space for rethinking and regenerating our shared intellectual and political terrain. This paper is directed towards an audience rooted in the more dominant spaces in our discipline that are often mired in extractive logics, universalist assumptions, and the imposition of singular frameworks. My goal has been to radically confront these limitations by inviting us all to walk as companions within the pluriverse. This is not a call to appropriate or commodify fungal relations but to learn from them, to engage with their world-building and world-unmaking processes as participants in an ongoing, relational ecology. My own engagement with fungal thinking has been a process of becoming a companion rather than an extractor – a delicate balance that challenges the hubris of knowing and instead embraces the humility of walking alongside. While I do not claim to have ‘discovered fungi’ nor the totality of these fungal insights, I do believe in the value of bringing it into this disciplinary space. By holding the tension between intelligibility and humility, between action and uncertainty, this framework allows us to better understand and navigate the complexities of the pluriverse. In doing so, it offers a way to decompose the rigid foundations of dominant IR while nourishing the possibility for more ethical, plural, and relational ways of being and knowing. The work of walking as a companion, not just to fungi but to the pluriverse itself, requires constant learning and reflection. I offer this work not as a definitive answer but as an invitation to continue this journey together.

Now addressing the former, I turn to insight from Indigenous methodologies to validate the relevance and potency of a fungal framing. Kovach writes on the necessity of employing contextually appropriate analytical frameworks as being ‘the structure, form, or frame arising from the data to focus the findings’Footnote ⁷⁴ to conceptualise data when using Indigenous or decolonial methodologies. One prominent example in Kovach’s work is her emphasis on metaphor as a powerful analytic, capable of conveying meaning ‘within and across cultures’. She argues that Indigenous epistemology is holistic, animate, and relational, grounded in community, place, and kin, and that this relationality demands close attention to context. Concepts, she notes, are often communicated through metaphoric reference points, making metaphor not just illustrative but integral to Indigenous ways of knowing. As she puts it, ‘it is not a stretch that the use of metaphor as an analytical framework finds a home within Indigenous methodologies’.Footnote ⁷⁵ With this in mind, and walking from my own vantage point, I begin from a position that accepts metaphor as a highly flexible, effective tool for approaching relational concepts. From here, questions may be posed: how can the employment of a fungal framework, a methodology of metaphor, provide clarity for those of us seeking to engage with and encounter a dynamic pluriverse as we navigate the study of politics? Additionally, how do the implications of a fungal framework point us towards other potential illuminations within relational thinking, such as conceiving of the pluriverse as animate and agentic itself?

Many scholars have considered the contributions of fungi to social spheres. Tsing traces the commodity chain of the highly sought-after Matsutake mushroom, connecting it to ‘peculiar worlds’ across the globe and using ‘mushrooms to explore indeterminacy and the conditions of precarity, that is, life without the promise of stability’.Footnote ⁷⁶ On the precarity and uncertainty of worlds, and the teachings of mushrooms, Tsing writes:

The concept of patchiness, mosaics composed of open-ended assemblages of entangled ways of life, vibrantly speaks to the notion of a noticeable, yet not fully intelligible, pluriverse of heterogeneous worlds, each with its own rhythms. Tsing’s use of disturbance-based ecologies – spaces of ‘ruin’ where capitalist modes of alienation and extraction have left behind abandoned and disturbed ecosystems – echoes discussions of colonialism and metaphysical imperialism. These spaces of disturbance resonate with histories of exploitation, where places and communities have been violently subsumed by ‘singular world-ism’, denying their agency and capacity to contribute to knowledge production and world-building processes. And yet, in these ruins, we find life persisting. Fungi thrive here, demonstrating not conquest but resilience growing at the edges of empire and creating the conditions for renewal. Ruins are not only sites of destruction, but also spaces where capitalism’s limits become visible in its inability to fully subsume the ecological and social relations it disrupts. Fungi, as decomposers, become key agents in this process, thriving in the detritus of ruined ecosystems and fostering new forms of life that resist capitalist scalability. Thus, ruins are not only evidence of capitalism’s violence but also sites of potential and regeneration, where the pluriverse takes root.

Tsing’s framing of fungi as ‘companions’ also offers a vital corrective to possibilities of extractive thought within this framing, inviting us to see fungi as active participants in multispecies landscapes, co-creating the conditions of life rather than serving as passive resources to be exploited. Fungi are not merely tools or metaphors; they are collaborators in the complex ecologies of relationality. As Tsing notes, fungi flourish in the ‘seams’ of industrial and imperial systems, quietly regenerating life amid destruction, suggesting ways to rethink relationality not as a system to be managed but as a process of interdependence and care.Footnote ⁷⁸ The idea of fungi as companions reorients how we understand their role in a pluriversal framework. Like mycorrhizal networks that connect plant roots and soil, fungi remind us of the dynamic, often unseen relational networks that sustain life. Mushrooms, as the fruiting bodies of these networks, offer visible glimpses into deeper, hidden processes of entanglement and interdependence. Similarly, the pluriverse can only be partially glimpsed through its moments of visibility – manifestations of worlds brushing against each other in tension and/or resonance, in partiality and in excess. To engage with the pluriverse through a fungal framework, then, is to reject extractivist impulses to ‘know’ or ‘use’ and instead embrace a relational ethic of humility, care, and interconnection. This perspective has profound implications for understanding the pluriverse as an active force in global politics. Disturbance-based ecologies are not merely sites of degradation but spaces of potential and plurality. Like fungi decomposing dead matter into nutrients that fuel new growth, the pluriverse thrives in spaces of ruination, drawing life from the decay of singular-worlding. This process, far from being merely destructive, is profoundly generative. Perhaps the pluriverse is, too, constantly and intentionally mycoremediating, renegotiating, and practising an existence that seeks the dynamic continuity of decolonised relations. Rather than seeing the ‘mushrooms’ as ‘just mushrooms’, we must stay in constant awareness of mycelial forces (referring here to mycelium, the vast root network of fungi) hidden from our view. Perhaps these touchpoints are not isolated moments of worlds brushing against one another, but rather, signalling a larger effort of the pluriverse to move towards something else. Fungi, like the pluriverse, are active agents of transformation. They do not simply decompose but regenerate, renegotiating boundaries and creating conditions for new forms of life. To see fungi as companions is to understand the pluriverse not as a static state or extractable resource but as an ongoing, relational process, a web of interconnections that continually nourishes and is nourished by its entangled worlds. This ethic of care, rooted in humility and the refusal to dominate, provides a pathway for engaging with pluriversal politics as spaces of renewal and possibility.

Sheldrake, a biologist/mycologist, also offers a vivid exploration of how fungi entangle life, create worlds, shape human minds, and influence futures beyond the metaphorical. While Sheldrake often approaches fungi from a biological perspective, his analysis points towards the conceptual potential of fungal thinking for navigating the complexity and chaos of pluriversal entanglements. Sheldrake emphasises that mushrooms, the visible fruiting bodies of fungi, represent only a small part of the vast fungal networks that underlie them:

This distinction invites us to reconsider how we engage with relational ontologies. The visible mushroom offers a fleeting glimpse into the larger, hidden networks that sustain it – just as tensions, ruptures, or moments of visibility in the pluriverse offer insights into deeper relational processes. These visible manifestations, discussed by scholars as ‘moments of relations-relating’,Footnote ⁸⁰ ‘world-wakes’,Footnote ⁸¹ or ‘points of contact’,Footnote ⁸² illuminate the vast, unintelligible networks of relations that exist beyond perception. In this way, mushrooms become a metaphorical language for understanding the moments where worlds collide, interact, or affirm one another – without reducing these interactions to totalising explanations. A fungal framework, then, challenges us to stay true to pluriversal ethics of care and unintelligibility.Footnote ⁸³ It encourages us to engage with what is visible while humbly acknowledging what lies beyond our comprehension. For example, when ‘tensions’ occur, manifesting as resistance, conflict, or rupture, they can be understood as the fruiting bodies of deeper relational networks. These tensions, like mushrooms, emerge as evidence of underlying, multidimensional webs of unintelligible relations. To isolate a mushroom from its mycorrhizal network, however, is to sever it from its broader ecological context. Similarly, to extract a visible interaction from its relational fabric is to risk oversimplification and loss of meaning. By leaving the ‘mushroom’ in situ, entangled within its hidden networks, we maintain the complexity of the ecology surrounding it – even as these relations remain unknowable and unfixable. To think fungally is to embrace humility, to recognise the limitations of human understanding, and to honour the pluriversal life-force that exists beyond our grasp. It also reminds us of the significance of worlds that may not be ‘fruiting’ at any given moment, those relations that remain unseen yet crucial to sustaining life. This approach solidifies the necessity of engaging with the pluriverse as a dynamic, ongoing process rather than a static framework, making room for the possibility of transformation while respecting the relational networks that sustain it.

Fungi are not merely a metaphor for the pluriverse but an active model for understanding how worlding unfolds. Just as fungi break down, redistribute, and transform the remnants of decayed matter into conditions for new life, pluriversal politics function through the unmaking and reconfiguration of dominant epistemologies, repurposing what is decomposing into alternative worldings. To think fungally is not just to recognise decay but to engage with decomposition as a mode of political and ontological transformation. Unlike static metaphors, fungal processes are ontological forces that model how relationality, mutual entanglement, and decomposition structure the pluriverse. While one may not speak of a ‘fungal politics’ in the same way as a ‘pluriversal politics’, fungi offer a way of thinking about politics in terms of metabolic, subterranean, and symbiotic entanglements. Their role in decomposition is not just biological but world-making, shaping the conditions for what comes after collapse. Fungal relationality challenges extractive knowledge systems by revealing how transformation happens through networks that refuse total legibility – always shifting, always unsettling, always metabolising. Thus, the fungal framework is not simply a device for illustrating relationality – it is an epistemic and methodological tool for engaging with the pluriverse itself. Thinking fungally is a way to inhabit transformation, to embrace the uncertainty of decay as generative, and to recognise that decomposition is never the end but the condition of possibility for something otherwise. By providing a model for engaging with emergence rather than fixed structures, a fungal framework clarifies how the pluriverse operates – not as a stable, coherent system but as a shifting terrain of relations in which knowledge, governance, and ontology are continuously metabolised. Fungi reveal that pluriversal engagement requires not mastery or total comprehension but an attunement to process, an ability to work with what is already decomposing and transforming. A fungal framework, then, does not impose clarity by reducing complexity but instead offers a way to navigate it through entanglement, humility, and the recognition that politics, like decomposition, is always ongoing.

How does one act, then, within a framework defined by uncertainty, precarity, and relational complexity? A fungal framework provides a way of navigating this uncertainty without succumbing to relativism – a pitfall that might leave us paralysed, unable to address the ‘mushrooms’ erupting with sporophytic calls against racism, patriarchy, colonialism, and other systemic oppressions. While we may never fully understand or perceive the vast web of relations teeming beneath the surface, a fungal approach invites us to observe patterns within the landscape of visibility – those moments where tensions, ruptures, and affirmations emerge as fruiting bodies of deeper relational networks. These visible manifestations, or ‘mushrooms’, signal spaces where decomposition may be required and where possibilities for renewal and transformation arise. Acting on these patterns necessitates an acknowledgement of rooted connections, even if these connections remain beyond our sensory or empirical grasp. It is an act of faith, a willingness to engage with the limits of certainty while maintaining a commitment to action. This requires a form of trust in the unseen – a trust in the interconnections that sustain relational worlds even when they elude direct comprehension.Footnote ⁸⁴ Employing a fungal framework specifically offers a distinct avenue for IR scholars to investigate complex systems of global power and relationality. For example, by framing institutions, policies, and power structures as akin to fungal networks – that is, connected by unseen and dynamic relationships – researchers may be able to better trace how ‘decompositions’ within global political economies give rise to emergent networks of resistance, renewal, and care. Methodologically, this approach emphasises attentiveness to ‘moments of fruiting’, where visible tensions or transformations reveal deeper relational dynamics. By attending to these manifestations, scholars can analyse resistance movements, policy shifts, or institutional collapses not as isolated events but as part of broader ecological and systemic patterns. Additionally, the intentional inability to achieve empirical certainty does not preclude action; rather, it calls for an approach grounded in humility and attunement. Through the brief moments where the borders of worldings are made visible, we can discern which voices are asserting themselves, calling out against overbearing forces, or signalling a need for relational rebalancing. These patterns offer clues to the dynamics of power and possibility, revealing spaces where intervention or care may be most urgently needed … where agents of rot and decay (e.g. moments of resistance, social movements, etc.) may be viewed not as ‘threats’ to be eradicated but rather as generative processes critical to flourishing otherwise.

Ecological processes, like wildfires, provide a powerful model for this dynamic. Often misunderstood as purely destructive, wildfires serve as ecological medicine,Footnote ⁸⁵ clearing excessive underbrush and organic material to restore balance and reinvigorate the soil. Some species, such as the Karner blue butterfly caterpillar or fire-dependent pine trees, rely on these disturbances for survival.Footnote ⁸⁶ Similarly, the ‘fires’ of resistance and decomposition within the pluriverse create conditions of possibility for other worlds to emerge and flourish. These processes of decay and renewal demonstrate the pluriverse’s capacity to engage with multiplicity and relationality without collapsing into universalism or nihilism. Through this lens, a fungal framework helps us reconceptualise the pluriverse as an interconnected ecology of ‘multiple universals’ – worlds that exist as universals in their own right yet never cohere into a singular universal.Footnote ⁸⁷ This perspective highlights the importance of respecting the autonomy of individual worldings while recognising relational interdependence. The forest, then, is not simply a metaphor for the pluriverse; it is an ecological hermeneutic, a microcosm of the ‘pluriversality of pluriversalities’, ever-evolving webs that resist simplification and totality. Perhaps this discussion is far beyond the scope of this paper, but I suspect not be entirely beyond the scope of a fungal framing.

Ultimately, this framework offers a means of navigating the tensions of relational cosmology without reifying relationality itself. It calls on us to accept that our own growth may be subject to decomposition, and that transformation often arises from the soil of ruin. By acting within this framework, we (re)affirm the pluriverse’s generative potential – its ability to nourish new ways of being and knowing while dismantling the rigid structures of the OWW. In doing so, we align ourselves with a mode of engagement that seeks not domination or resolution, but attunement and coexistence within ongoing, dynamic processes of relational life. A fungal framework proves particularly useful as a method when engaging with complex, contested, and interconnected terrains – whether in political analysis, decolonial practice, or environmental studies. It is especially well suited for addressing situations where the relationships between actors, forces, and systems are dynamic and not easily reducible to binary oppositions or static categories. For instance, in examining global power structures shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, the framework invites us to move beyond surface-level critiques of domination and instead trace the hidden, subterranean networks that sustain and reproduce these systems. By attending to the ‘mushrooms’, the visible moments of resistance, conflict, or transformation, we gain entry points for understanding and responding to systemic injustices without oversimplifying or totalising their causes or claiming to ‘know’ the extent of their rootedness and entanglements. This lens also requires practitioners to remain attuned to the ways in which their interventions might inadvertently perpetuate harm or disrupt ecologies of relations, even inadvertently. In this sense, a fungal framework guides action, helping researchers and practitioners navigate the ethical and epistemic complexities of living and acting in a world of many worlds.

Thinking fungally offers more than conceptual clarity; it also provides a framework for navigating the uncertainties and responsibilities of living within a pluriverse. Bierend suggests that fungi compel us to reconsider our modes of thinking and being, writing that they can ‘serve as partners and even teachers in the project of realizing more integrative, reciprocal ways of thinking and, therefore, being’.Footnote ⁸⁸ However, this invitation does not anthropomorphise fungi as didactic guides but instead acknowledges their role as companions – partners in a broader, interconnected web of existence that remains largely beyond human comprehension. In this sense, the fungal framework embodies the notion of the pluriverse as ‘more than one, less than two’, an in-between space that resists both reductionist metaphors and overdetermined epistemologies.Footnote ⁸⁹ Fungal thinking, then, emerges as a way to learn from the more-than-human without presuming mastery, reflecting the humility required to navigate the chaotic entanglements of relational worlds. At the same time, this approach resists the temptation to extract knowledge from fungi as though they were simply resources for human understanding. Drawing on Tsing’s earlier words about coexisting ‘without either harmony or conquest’,Footnote ⁹⁰ fungal thinking resides in a dynamic tension, a back-and-forth between recognising fungi’s active roles in ecological and relational worlds and employing them as metaphors for broader systems of interconnection. This tension does not demand resolution but instead invites an ongoing, reciprocal process of learning that is both speculative and grounded. A fungal approach invites us to navigate this tension between ‘pure metaphor’ and ‘intelligible teacher’, both in terms of our relationship with fungi, but also in terms of employing it as a mode of analysis.

For example, a fungal framework could provide innovative insights into security studies and state formation by challenging the anthropocentric and state-centric assumptions that dominate these fields. For instance, in security studies, the metaphor of fungal networks might help us reconceptualise notions of resilience and vulnerability. Rather than viewing security as the preservation of static borders or institutions, a fungal lens emphasises the dynamic, interdependent networks that sustain life and adapt to disturbances. Much like fungal mycelium regenerates after environmental disruption, security could be reimagined as a process of mutual care and relational regeneration across human and more-than-human systems. Or, regarding research on state formation, fungi’s ability to thrive in ‘disturbed ecologies’ suggests that political orders/worlds often emerge from spaces of perceived ruin or collapse. For example, the decentralised structures of governance in post-conflict zones or regions affected by climate crises might be better understood through a fungal framework that values connectivity and adaptability over hierarchical control. Such an approach could push IR to rethink the state not as a monolithic actor but as a porous, sometimes unintelligible, relational entity embedded in a web of human and non-human interactions, allowing for more nuanced analyses of global politics.

Smith’s critique of Western research as a colonial endeavour echoes this lesson. She notes that Western researchers often ‘claim to know’ based on brief and extractive encounters.Footnote ⁹¹ This arrogance denies the complex, often hidden relations that sustain worlds and fuels cosmological imperialism. Fungal thinking counters this by embracing the partiality and impermanence of our knowledge. If all we encounter are the brief appearances of mushrooms, the visible fruiting bodies of far more expansive mycorrhizal networks, then to claim comprehensive knowledge is to perpetuate the same hubris that underpins colonial and extractive practices. Instead, we must dwell in the tension of incomplete encounters, walking alongside the pluriverse without seeking to dominate or define it. This approach also calls attention to the limits of perception and the unknowability of many relations. Not all fungal networks fruit into mushrooms; many remain permanently hidden, their existence imperceptible to human senses. This invisibility reminds us that relationality exceeds human understanding and calls for a radical humility in how we engage with the world. Our actions, even when well intentioned, ripple across networks we cannot fully see or understand, demanding caution and care as we navigate precarious ecologies and interdependent worlds. To think fungally is to accept that overgrowth may require decomposition, to see collapse not as failure but as a necessary part of regeneration. A fungal framework for IR thus moves beyond critique to propose a generative methodology for navigating relational worlds. By imagining the pluriverse as a fungal network, we can recognise its capacity to rot away the rigid structures of the OWW while nourishing new possibilities.

At its core, a fungal framework for IR offers both a conceptual and methodological approach grounded in relationality, interdependence, and humility. Its core tenets include recognising the interconnectedness of all entities (human and more-than-human), emphasising processes of decomposition and renewal as central to understanding change, and embracing unintelligibility to avoid reductive or extractive modes of analysis. As a research ethic, the fungal framework challenges researchers to approach their work with humility, acknowledging, embracing, and remaining transparent about the limits of knowledge while remaining attuned to hidden or unintelligible dynamics. This ethic also invites collaborative inquiry, positioning the researcher as a companion within the relational web, rather than as an external observer seeking mastery. As a method, a fungal framework encourages abductive ventures that centre on the emergent and interconnected nature of phenomena, rather than starting from predetermined categories or linear assumptions. It asks researchers to observe patterns, ruptures, and points of tension as ‘fruiting bodies’ of deeper relational networks, guiding inquiry into both the visible and hidden forces shaping the world. By tracing connections across disparate scales and actors – human and non-human – it allows researchers to construct nuanced interpretations of power, agency, and resistance. The fungal framework thus supports iterative and reflective inquiry, wherein researchers revisit assumptions and adjust interpretations as new patterns emerge, fostering a mode of analysis that is as adaptive and relational as the networks it seeks to understand. By embracing the fungal framework as an abductive method, researchers initiate a process of decomposition within dominant IR paradigms. This methodological shift challenges the discipline’s fixation on universal theories, positivist methodologies, and atomised actors like the state, exposing their limitations in accounting for relational complexity and systemic entanglement. Just as fungi break down rigid structures to nourish new forms of life, this approach ‘rots’ away the epistemological certainties that have sustained IR’s singular worldview. Through this decomposition, the field becomes fertile ground for pluriversal perspectives, creating space for methodologies that prioritise interdependence, dynamic change, and the unintelligibility of relational worlds. In rotting the foundations of IR, the fungal framework fosters the emergence of more adaptive, inclusive approaches that better reflect the complexities of global politics.

The decay of disciplinary corpses

Like saprobes, fungi draw nourishment from decay, transforming what was dead or oppressive into fertile ground for renewal. I propose a ‘mouldy turn’ in, across, and beyond the discipline, one that embraces decomposition as a necessary process to create space for community, resurgence, and life. This turn does not offer a road map to a new theory or framework but instead demands engagement with the processes of rot and regeneration, processes that destabilise dominant paradigms and make room for more ethical, relational, and plural ways of being. Without this decomposition, the structures of dominant IR remain suffocating, perpetuating extractive logics and epistemological violences that foreclose pluriversal futures. To think and act within the pluriverse, we must dismantle the entrenched hierarchies and universalist ambitions that deny the legitimacy of other ways of being and knowing. The mouldy turn is an invitation to attend to the emergent patterns in our intellectual and political landscapes: the mushrooms that signal where decomposition is most urgently needed and the clusters that suggest where possibilities for renewal are taking root. These touchpoints – moments of resistance, affirmation, or collapse – call us to act with care and humility, recognising that our actions as beings, and as researchers, ripple across worlds we cannot fully perceive. The OWW is unsustainable, suffocating, and in desperate need of decomposition. If the death of dominant, Western IR as we know it is the price for its regeneration, then so be it. Only through the rot of the OWW’s carcass can the worlds it has subjugated move beyond mere survival and resistance into flourishing. This is not a moment to mourn the decay of an extractive and exclusionary paradigm but to embrace the fertile possibilities it opens for more just, relational, and pluriversal ways of engaging the world.

In writing this, I have sought to walk the delicate line between companionship and extraction. I must again acknowledge my own limitations. I am no expert; there are others who have long been closer companions to fungi than I could ever claim to be, having cultivated relationships of reciprocity and respect with fungi, practising forms of relationality that far might exceed the metaphorical or analytic. The fungal framework I propose is not an act of discovery but an attempt to attune to what is already present, what has been nurtured, practised, and embodied by others for generations. My aim is not to master or reify these insights but to use them to provoke a radical confrontation with the rigid structures of the OWW and the extractive tendencies of the discipline. I offer this work as a way of engaging with the pluriverse that allows us to walk along beings in which we are all extremely entangled with, encouraging a shared acknowledgement of fungal companionship as some form of common soil, while embracing humility, care, and the generative possibilities of decomposition.

This mouldy turn is not the final answer but an invitation to imagine otherwise. By embracing decay, we create fertile ground for new life and new ways of knowing to emerge. The challenge is not only to recognise the rot in our disciplinary foundations but to lean into it – to allow it to nourish the pluriverse and transform IR into a space where many worlds can coexist, flourish, and thrive. If the mouldy turn leaves us with one certainty, it is this: decomposition is not the end. It is a beginning. Only through decay can we prepare the soil for what comes next.