Michel Serres’s Le parasite: the noise of the world at work

Abstract

ABSTRACT A universal irreversible movement, a single downward-pointing arrow gives rise to a second movement, parasitic upon the first but pointing in the opposite direction, towards an ever greater diversity and degree of organisation. This definition of the parasite is illustrated in the paradoxical relation between entropy and evolution. Starting from references scattered throughout the text, this article aims to elucidate and reconstruct the ‘fundamental thesis’ of Le parasite which grows out of Serres’s intimate knowledge of nineteenth-century science and in particular thermodynamics, which is the starting-point of his theory of ‘noise’ affecting all transfers of energy or meaning.