De/growth in the cli-fungsroman : ageing, epochalisation, and rewilding the flesh of the world in Matt Bell’s Appleseed

Matt Bell’s Appleseed (2021) serves as an example of an emerging sub-genre of climate fiction that this article proposes as the cli-fungsroman: a narrative that interweaves multi-scalar narratives of planetary catastrophe with depictions of human and nonhuman ageing processes that have been dynamically reshaped by growth capitalism’s acceleration or foreshortening of typical human and nonhuman lifespans. Bell utilises literary epochalisation as a lens through which to explore these premature endings and extensions of lifecycles across centuries, while also allegorising the detrimental outcomes of metabolic rift through a bioprinting device known as the ‘Loom’. In doing so, the novel reflects on rewilding and degrowth debates, which are often plagued by abstract conceptions of the time of nature and of capital. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh of the world, this article analyses how Bell’s novel creatively envisions post-growth imaginaries of flourishing through processes of ageing in a multispecies future.