Paradise with/out Parasites

Abstract

In this chapter, the untidy guest appears in the disguise of a parasite.¹ (However, I have barely managed to utter these words, when the critical, all-knowing sociologist — swiftly and almost immaterially — glides to the scene and immediately objects:)

• Wait a minute! What are you talking about? A parasite?

• Yes, I reply, taken by surprise by this intrusion into my narrative privacy. — The parasite is something or someone who benefits at the expense of the host. The parasite always takes, never gives.

• But aren’t parasites by necessity always small invertebrates? he demurs, and continues:

• Tapeworms, fleas, vermin, flukes, lice and the likes, but surely no humans? If you are telling me that a tapeworm has ever come and knocked on your door or been invited to the table d’hôte, then I must say that you’ve lost it. I thought you were a proper, respectable Sociologist. You have got to be kidding. Besides, all this makes my skin itch…

• Let me assure you that most of the parasites I am referring to will not bite you. Yet please bear in mind that even animal parasitism is all about guests and hosts. As philosopher Michel Serres suggests in his book The Parasite, ‘[t]he animal-host offers a meal from the larder or from his own flesh; as a hotel or a hostel, he provides a place to sleep, quite graciously, of course’.² Serres proposes that the language of the science called parasitology ‘bears several traces of anthropomorphism’.³ It ‘uses the vocabulary of the host: hostility or hospitality’,⁴ and thus its understanding of parasitic relations is to a great extent shaped by our sense of ancient customs and habits related to hospitality, table manners, hostelry and relations with strangers.