Parasitism and Multispecies World

Jayjit Sarkar teaches in the Department of English at Raiganj University, India. He is the author of Illness as Method: Beckett, Kafka, Mann, Woolf and Eliot.

"Sarkar develops parasitism as both a relational ontology and an ethics of asymmetrical coexistence, moving beyond the host–parasite binary without dissolving it to propose a non-hierarchical mode of surviving in an age of ecological crisis. The result is a concise, original, and necessary contribution to multispecies studies." —Sussane Bayerlipp, Department of English and American Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt"Jayjit Sarkar offers a manifestly timely and imaginative intervention into contemporary ecological thought. Known for his multidisciplinary approach, Sarkar brings a seldom encountered interdisciplinary sensibility to the question of relationality in the Anthropocene. Drawing upon Serres, Derrida, Haraway, Margulis, and others, he transforms the figure of the parasite from a symbol of exclusion into a powerful conceptual resource for rethinking coexistence, interdependence, and interbeing. Not content to think conventionally about the host–parasite binary, Sarkar develops a thoroughly original account of the parasite–parasite relation, one that foregrounds the asymmetrical yet productive entanglements through which life comes into being. More than this, rather than treating organisms as isolated entities, he demonstrates how human and non-human beings are interspersed within shared milieus of becoming, dependency, and mutual transformation. The result is a compelling vision of ecological existence that contests anthropocentric assumptions and opens new pathways for thinking about our shared multispecies futures. Parasitism and the Multispecies World is essential reading for scholars interested in ecology, posthumanism, critical theory, and the question of how we might learn to live together in a damaged world." —Joff P. N. Bradley, Faculty and Graduate School of Foreign Languages, Teikyo University, Japan

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements ; Pre-position; Para- or Thinking Relationality with Parasite ; Composition and De-composition; Parasite-Parasite; The (Non)Intimacy of Strangers ; Bibliography