The Parasite

Michel Serres
Translated by Lawrence R. Schehr
Introduction by Cary Wolfe

Table of Contents

Title


$19.95 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-4881-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4881-8

 

The foundational work in the area now known as posthuman thought.

Influential philosopher Michel Serres’s foundational work uses fable to explore how human relations are identical to that of the parasite to the host body. Among Serres’s arguments is that by being pests, minor groups can become major players in public dialogue—creating diversity and complexity vital to human life and thought.

“Serres is an extremely imaginative thinker with extraordinary intellectual range. Moving through fields as diverse as physics, information theory, literature, philosophy, theology, anthropology, music, art, and political economy, and through works as different as La Fontaine’s fables, Rousseau’s Confessions, Molière’s Tartuffe, Plato’s Symposium, and the Bible, Serres tries to uncover points of convergence between the natural and human sciences. Serres’s writings provide unusually rich resources.”—Religious Studies Review

“The richness of Serres’s work lies not only in the controlled brilliance of his theoretical constructs, it lies also in the fine detail of his readings of the texts at his disposal. He once again demonstrates what the exact sciences can learn from cultural sources they too often tend to ignore.”—MLN

“Here is philosophy in a new key—mercurial, elliptical, narrative. We can be thankful for this fluently translated and usefully annotated introduction to a figure who is emerging as one of the searching, provocative thinkers of our time.”—Library Journal

“This re-release of a classic philosophical text is highly recommended” —Midwest Book Review

Michel Serres is professor in history of science at the Sorbonne, professor of Romance languages at Stanford University, and author of several books, including Genesis.

Lawrence R. Schehr is professor of French at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University. His books include Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal and Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the “Outside”.

288 pages | 9 b&w photos | 2007 | Posthumanities Series, volume 1

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translator's Preface
Translator's Introduction
Introduction to the New Edition: Bring the Noise: The Parasite and the Multiple Genealogies of Posthumanism by Cary Wolfe

I. Interrupted Meals
Logics
Rats' Meals
Cascades
Satyrs' Meals
Host/Guest
Diminishing Returns
The Obscure and the Confused
Decisions, Indecisions
The Excluded Third, Included
The Lion's Share
The Simple Arrow
Athlete's Meals
Difference and the Construction of the Real
Picaresques and Cybernetics
The New Balance
Pentecost

II. More Interrupted Meals
Technique, Work
Rats' Dinner
Diode, Triode
 
Logic of the Fuzzy
 
The Master and the Counter-Master
More Rats' Meals
Machines and Engines
 
The Means, the Milieu
 
Spaces of Transformation
Lunar Meals
Meals of the Lord in Paradise
Insects' Meals
Work
Energy, Information
The Gods, the Perpetual Host
 
Interlude
Full-Length Portrait of the Parasite
Confessed Meals
Jean-Jacques, Laawmaker's Judge
Noises
Music

III. Fat Cows and Lean Cows
Economy
Salad Meals
Stercoral Origin of Property Rights
Meals of Satire
Exchange of Money, the Exact and the Fuzzy
Meals among Brothers
Theory of the Joker
Meals of Chesnuts
The Sun and the Sign
The Cows Come out of the River
Stocks
Cows Eat Cows
Theory of the Line
The Best Definition
Of Sickness in General

IV. Midnight Suppers
Society
Impostors' Meals
Analyze, Paralyze, Catalyze
The Proper Name of the Host
Masters and Slaves
Theory of the Quasi-Object
The Empty Table
On Love
The Devil
On Love
The Worst Definition

Stories, Animals