#synchronicityofparasites: Parasite Rex

zaterdag 16 november 2019

Parasite Rex

“Here was a new meaning parasites could have for us--one that could take the place of Lankester's degenerates, Jewish tapeworms, and the old myths of failed evolution. One that could be biologically faithful without turning life into a horror movie, without having parasites come bursting out of our ribs.”

Nature's Criminals; How parasites came to be hated by just about everyone
Terra Incognita; Swimming through the heart, fighting to the death inside a caterpillar, and other parasitic adventures
The Thirty Years' War; How parasites provoke, manipulate, and get intimate with our immune system
A Precise Horror; How parasites turn their hosts into castrated slaves, drink blood, and manage to change the balance of nature
The Great Step Inward; Four billion years in the reign of Parasite Rex
Evolution from Within; The peacock's tail, the origin of species, and other battles against the rules of evolution
The Two-Legged Host; How Homo sapiens grew up with creatures inside
How to Live in a Parasitic World; A sick planet, and how the most newly arrived parasite can be part of a cure

https://carlzimmer.com/books/parasite-rex/

Synchronicity or the happening by chance of two or more related or similar events at the same time, is often positioned within the realm of parapsychology and magical thinking, or with some kind of quantum effect crossing over into the classical world.

Synchronicity can appear to point towards some kind of hidden or unknown connectivity underneath events.

In the case of #synchronicityofparasites, parasites operating as pre-conscious perceptual filters, installing a bias for meaningful events, or parasites as biological or network tricksters hiding causal links out of sight of the scientific apparatus or categories, turn the concept into another effective parasitic strategy.

In a way #synchronicityofparasites itself acts as a parasite that embodies the hidden link between all those more or less isolated parasite projects in science, art and literature and turns them into a kind of decentralized para-culture.

Many of the posts refer to a series of academic papers on parasites, parasitically appropriated and printed to a zine format.

This to promote academic writing within the format of the zine and turn the zine into a tool for (self)-education and knowledge production. But also to lift this knowledge out of its academic niche and into an active social cultural network. I feel relatively free to do so because I think that anyone promoting a positive view on parasitism cannot be too rigid about being parasited upon without contradicting themselves: In a way, the parasite incorporates its own creative commons. At the same time the library also acknowledges the precariousness involved in parasitism. Our zines are not sold for profit, mass produced or randomly distributed.

#marc_van_elburg, www.zinedepo.nl

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