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| Aris Roussinos |
It is difficult, when considering how the pandemic has revealed the total incapacity of the British state, not to think of the parasitic tropical fungus Cordyceps.
When an ant is infected by its spores, the insect is compelled to engage in behaviour disastrously fatal to itself, but essential to the fungus’ reproduction. Driven by a suicidal urge it cannot control, the ant climbs to the highest branches of a nearby tree, clamps down hard with its mandibles on a leaf and dies.
Its brain eventually erupts into a cylindrical fruit, which pushes its way, like an exploring finger, from the ant’s head to release its spores on the breeze and infect nearby colonies. The ant’s survival is not an evolutionary concern of the fungus; all that matters is its ability to totally manipulate the ant’s functions, and to spread its spores as far as possible, at whatever cost to its host.
Such is the British state after forty years of exposure to neoliberal ideology.
Its brain eventually erupts into a cylindrical fruit, which pushes its way, like an exploring finger, from the ant’s head to release its spores on the breeze and infect nearby colonies. The ant’s survival is not an evolutionary concern of the fungus; all that matters is its ability to totally manipulate the ant’s functions, and to spread its spores as far as possible, at whatever cost to its host.
Such is the British state after forty years of exposure to neoliberal ideology.
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