The Fuzzy Logics of Parasitism: Catachresis and Prognosis in Michel Serres

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the sense, in the philosophy of Michel Serres, of a kind of parasitism that deviates subtly from existing understandings of the term. Parasitism is instantiated by a subtle deviation in his use of the word, such that it describes a deviant movement whose logic he describes as fuzzy. The role of the parasite in this sense comes between the diagnostic work of critical philosophy and the prognostic aim of inventing future institutions. How can one imagine the social orders and institutions that will come to replace those that are currently in various stages of crisis or dissolution? In his later writing Serres focuses his thought concerning habituation, dwelling, and world transformation on the generations for whom, he claims, no other world but a newly minted one ever existed. However, the utopianism suggested by this idea becomes complicated by the fuzzy logic of the parasite. A catachresis of the notion of the parasite suggests a revision of the concept of force under the influence of a latent vulnerability. Serres implies that speculating on the evolution of the species requires an understanding of its adaptive form.