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The Parasite

2007
•
Author:

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

The Parasite

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.

This re-release of a classic philosophical text is highly recommended.

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Midwest Book Review

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.

The Parasite

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 (Minnesota, 2003).

The Parasite

This re-release of a classic philosophical text is highly recommended.

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Midwest Book Review

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.

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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.

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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.

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Library Journal