Parasitism and Multispecies World (Rethinking Relationality in the Anthropocene)

Reimagines parasitism as a multispecies mode of thinking and living, using the figure of the parasite to explore socio-political and ecological crises in the Anthropocene through relational and more-than-human perspectives.

The host–parasite binary is a recurrent trope in our collective imagination in which the figure of the parasite is usually associated with the stranger, the outsider, the migrant, the homeless and the foreigner: the one who only takes and gives nothing in return. A parasite is an archetypal trickster who sutures stories in exchange for free meals. The figure of the parasite is an interference that disturbs the symmetrical and reciprocal relationship between the host and the guest. The proposed book employs this figure of the parasite to find whether it can help us to rethink existing social and biological relations. Moving beyond the hierarchical binary between host and parasite, native and foreign, and inside and outside, the book proposes a non-hierarchical parasite–parasite relationship as a new mode of surviving in these troubled times, a world in deep distress because of the incessant extractivist and expansionist actions of humans. An ecosystem is a multispecies assemblage and to be a parasite in such a network of relationships is to be grounded, to be close to the earth and to re-member our radical interdependency upon other components of the ecosystem. Parasitism brings down the elevated understanding of human as a species that is above other species to the level of what Haraway calls humus or compost. It transforms the human subject from being a transcendental figure to an earthly being connected with other earthly beings. The parasite teaches us not only to be interrelated but also interdependent, that we are radically interdependent upon each other for survival. To be a parasite, as this book suggests, is to remain humble, situated, asymmetrical, queer and interdependent.

The parasite is an ambiguous figure that comes up again and again in the relational thinking of Michel Serres and the deconstructionist thinking of Jacques Derrida, but this book also engages with some of the contemporary thinkers like Lynn Margulis, Charlotte Brives, Donna J. Haraway, Val Plumwood and Virginie Maris; literary critics like J. Hillis Miller; and art critics like A.V. Marracinni to locate the relational turn in ecological and biological discourses in the 21st century. The book espouses parasitism as a form of multispecies thinking as well as doing necessary for survival in the Anthropocene.