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| Helminths-of-Spheniscus-magellanicus |
Paradise with/out Parasites
Olli Pyyhtinen
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137399502_3
"To me it seems that the notion of the parasite does nothing more than merely restate the old problem of the 'free rider', albeit in a slightly different and admittedly more obscure vocabulary.
I'm beginning to feel slightly irritated by my interlocutor's belligerence by now. However, I manage to hold my temper and defend myself: The notion of the parasite is irreducible to that of the free rider. In French, there are three meanings to the word parasite:
(1) in its biological sense, a parasite is an organism feeding on another one without benefiting its host in any way;
(2) in the anthropological sense, an abusive guest (unlike the biological parasite, the social parasite does not necessarily live in its host,but just by it);
(3) and in information theory, it designates noise, static, abreak in the message. Please remember that the neighbouring function of eating is making noise:the open mouth that eats also emits sound. – Hmm,the critical sociologist murmurs.
Sounds awfully messy. I can vaguely see the connection between the first two senses, but what on earth could they possibly have in common with the third one? –
That is the tricky part. There is in fact no immediate connection between them, but they only share a similarity of form, an isomorphism. Each of the three meanings displays a relation of a similar kind: a simple, irreversible arrow . The parasite is the one who or that which intervenes and interrupts.
(...)
One- way relations? exclaims the critical sociologist. –I can't accept that. All relations involve reciprocity! And let me remind you, you yourself have said so in your book on Simmel.(10) Let me see, on page 78, for example, you write: 'Interactivity forms the ontology of the world'. So there you have it! Check and mate! I could also cite dozens of other pages where you suggest that all our relations are based on exchange.
Please forgive me for the sins of my youth! I beg, with an overly dramatic tremolo. Nowadays I disagree with my former self on the fact that our relations would be selfevidently founded on exchange. This is because exchange is possible only on the condition of excluding the parasite, which makes exchange derivative of a more basic relation, the parasitic one. The exchange of words we are having now, for instance, is possible only on the condition that we manage to struggle together to exclude noise and all potentially intervening third parties. The parasite is our 'common enemy', a common nuisance we have to get rid of. In this light, then, the collective 'is the expulsion of the stranger, of the enemy, of the parasite' (Serres 2007: 56).
And just look at yourself: you are a parasite in your own right. Here. I was, in tranquil peace, beginning to tell my audience about the parasite as an untidy guest, but you interrupted me before I even got properly started and immediately kicked up a fuss."
