… It excites it or incites it; it puts it into motion, or it paralyzes it. It changes its state, changes its energetic state, its displacements and condensations.
… It immunizes them or blocks them, makes them adapt or kills them, selects them and destroys them. … It is their fluctuations, their moving back and forth, their test and training.
This is from The Parasite by Michel Serres (originally published in 1980):
… The parasite is a thermal exciter.
He aims to please at the table d’hôte; he is invited with this aim in mind. The convivial climate is changed by his movements, his stammering and his looks; he makes others laugh; he takes, gives, takes again, directs speech, communicates a small, warm shudder to the others that assures us that we are together. Without him, the feast is only a cold meal.
… The parasite is an exciter. Far from transforming a system, changing its nature, its form, its elements, its relations and its pathways (but who accomplishes this act, what set, what force succeeds? What does “transform the world” mean concretely? What is work, really?), the parasite makes it change states differentially. It inclines it. It makes the equilibrium of the energetic distribution fluctuate. It dopes it. It irritates it.It inflames it. Often this inclination has no effect. But it can produce gigantic ones by chain reactions or reproduction. Immunity of epidemic crisis.
Excitation, inclination — I change the meaning of the prefix, into more or less, right or left, cold or hot, a measured distance — the prefix para-. The parasite intervenes, enters the system as an element of fluctuation. It excites it or incites it; it puts it into motion, or it paralyzes it. It changes its state, changes its energetic state, its displacements and condensations. By despoiling actions, like ascarid worms or leeches; by toxic actions, like ticks or fleas; by trauma, like bilharzia or trichina worms; by infection, like dysenteric amoebas; by obstruction, like the filaria of elephantiasis; by compression, like those that form cysts; by irritations, inflammations, itching; by rashes (my two parasites together eat [manger] and are scratched [se démanger]).
The parasite brings us into the vicinity of the simplest and most general operator on the variability of systems. It makes them fluctuate by their differential distances. It immunizes them or blocks them, makes them adapt or kills them, selects them and destroys them. It is necessary to say of the parasite, generalizing Claude Bernard’s expression from his first lesson of toxic agents: the veritable reagents of life? The parasite brings us near the fine equilibria of living systems and near their energetic equilibria. It is their fluctuations, their moving back and forth, their test and training. Is the parasite the element of metamorphosis (and by that old word I mean the transforming movement of life itself)?
… The thermal excitation is minimal; it is differential. This business seems to occur at night in the dark and in silence. Everything is very small there: scratching interrupting the quiet, a small consciousness upon waking, a small creak, a short run to safety and then immediate return.
… Minimal excitation, with a barely perceptible effect — they always loved each other that much. Minimal and reversed excitation, for catastrophic effects. Attention: this logic is very important. We always forget it and understand nothing. We must learn to modulate the weight of causes and that of effects. Without that, no history. The differential change of state insures the group in its equilibrium. Yes, it is no more than a shudder, as if the whole trembled around its stability. If the parasite is of the mind [spirituel], it makes us aware that we are we, good together — we were, well, forgetting this. Perhaps we were going to die from forgetting.
… It is a little troublemaker.
It is there, necessary, on my path.
My most recent previous post from Serres’s book is here.
-Julie
