Pre-publication draft of Brown, S.D.

(2004) ‘Parasite logic’ Journal of 1

Organisational Change Management ISSN 0953-4814 Vol 17, 4. 383-395.

Parasite Logic
Steven D. Brown

Have you noticed the popularity among scientists of the word interface – which
supposes that the junction between two sciences or two concepts is perfectly under
control? On the contrary, I believe that these spaces between are more complicated
than one thinks. This is why I have compared them to the Northwest Passage …
with shores, islands, and fractal ice floes. Between the hard sciences and the so-
called human sciences the passage resembles a jagged shore, sprinkled with ice,
and variable … It’s more fractal than simple. Less a juncture under control than an
adventure to be had (Serres with Latour, 1995: 70)

What living together is. What is the collective? This question fascinates us now
(Serres, 1982: 224)

It is commonplace wisdom that open and transparent communication is a good thing.

Differences in opinion, vested interests and disparities in knowledge may all be
moderated by the creation of routes and channels where communication may flow
freely between speakers. Removing the pre-existing barriers to the free flow of talk
may then be seen as an unalloyed good. This view reaches its finest expression in
Habermas' (1988) communicational utopia built around 'ideal speech situations'. Here
bridges will be thrown across the great divisions within the social order - experts will
talk to laypersons, government with citizenry. A modern, expanded agora will be
founded upon a communicative rationality.

In Good to talk?, Deborah Cameron takes issue with this doxa. She locates the
importance of the idea of open communication with the growth of 'enterprise culture'.
This arises when a particular version of a business model, where flexibility and a
calculative rationality serve as basic axioms, is seen as basis of all forms of
organisation. Enterprise culture identifies 'communication' as both a means towards
efficient functioning and a target which should be subject to continuous improvement.
Both aspects require the mobilisation of expert knowledges regarding effective
communication such that the regulation of communicative acts becomes 'an important
tool in the creation of a 'strong corporate culture'' (Cameron, 2000: 16). For Cameron,
this colonisation of communication by enterprise culture means that the drive for open
and transparent speech becomes yoked to the demand for increased performativity.

How might this performative 'culture of communication' be resisted? Cameron's work

is essentially diagnostic. She responds with a counter-demand that communication as
a topic be 'liberated' from the expert knowledges and practices in which it is currently
enmired. This may be done, she claims, through pedagogic practices which recover a
notion of conversation as art, as storytelling endowed with 'ludic qualities' (p.182). In
this respect, her solution is similar to Lyotard's (1984) turn towards 'petit' narratives as
a way out of performativity. But what if the problem ran much deeper? Both Cameron
and Lyotard assume that there is a richer, more positive version of communication to
be rescued from its takeover within modern enterprise cultures. Here, presumably,
communication is supportive rather than corrosive of social relations. But what if this
assumption were itself the problem?
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Michel Serres offers a very different understanding of the role of communication in

social relations. His work, which draws variously on information theory,
anthropology and literary criticism offer a novel reorientation to how organising is
achieved through communicative means. In one of his major works - The Parasite -
which I will drawn on at length in what follows, Serres inverts our usual sense of
what is meant by communication, by displaying that it is noise and interruption which
are fundamental to organising social relations. He is scathing of the idea that 'free and
open communication' is possible, which he regards as a position only achieved by
silencing of alternatives and removing information, such that what is transmitted is
only what is already known in advance. In short, the scheme is entirely antithetical to
the very notion of communicating at all. In its place, he substitutes a framework
where the vagaries of what occurs between speakers, as messages become diffused,
subject to inteference, scrambled and translated, becomes the source of the rich
texture of social relations. The goal of this paper will be to explicate Serres'
framework and outline how this provides an alternative approach to the modes of
organising in modern 'cultures of communication' that undoes the demand of
performativity.

Stations and relations

We must start by returning to fundamental notions of communication. Imagine a

conversation between two people. This, it is often said, is the fundamental form of
human togetherness. The pure interaction of one human with another without
hindrance or undue mediation. Two people, co-present to one another begin to speak.
What happens? According to traditional information theory what transpires is the
passing of a signal, a message. Now we no longer have two people as such but more
precisely a sender and a receiver. She who speaks and she who listens. Or rather two
stations which can operate in both modes, between which messages go back and forth.
We have then already a form of mediation. Not just sender and receiver, but this third
thing – the message – which must be taken into account.

This third thing immediately gives us two problems, or rather it indicates a set of
limits. The fact that there is this message indicates that sender and receiver are not
identical. They must be different in some way – why else would it be necessary for
this third thing to interdict? If sender and receiver were entirely identical at the
moment of the communicative act there would be no message, no signal. And
conversely the presence of the signal indicates that despite this logical difference,
there is some communality between speaker and receiver. By a process of mediation
something passes back and forth. Some effect is generated in the opposing station by
the other. Something happens. These stations do not emit random noise, they are co-
ordinated in some way.

These limits – pure identity and pure difference – are the point of departure for
information theory. In Shannon & Weaver’s (1949) formulation they are the two end
points, the two points of complete equivocation and non-equivocation, at which zero
informational value is located. Pure identity needs no information, nothing distinctive
may pass. Pure difference cannot detect information, cannot pick out a distinctive
signal amongst the variation and heterogeneity. Hence the point of maximum
informational value is located somewhere between. In fact the solution is rather more
ingenious. Information theory posits that sender and receiver are both identical, after a
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fashion, and different. Each station is regarded as embodying the whole world. It
contains everything within it, but from its own unique perspective. Hence the signal,
information, generates effects not by communicating something that is intrinsically
lacking for the receiver but instead by communicating this difference in perspective.
A difference which makes a difference, to echo Bateson. This proves a rather elegant
solution to the problem of meaning, which can obviously not be mathematically
encoded. Meaning is the effect, it is the difference that occurs within the receiver
when the difference in perspective is communicated.

In this way, information theory is indebted to Leibniz. The theory of monads – self
contained substances which each have their own perspective on the world – is one
classic solution to the problem of how to think division and unity, or difference and
identity. Leibniz’s solution is right there at the heart of information theory. Norbert
Wiener claimed as much in 1932 when he announced that physics was set on a course
‘Back to Leibniz’. He originally had in mind the contemporary value of the
monadology in clarifying conceptual advances in quantum theory. But the mark is
clearly there on the elaboration of cybernetics.

All of which provides two important themes for the work of Michel Serres.
Information theory is what provokes much of Serres’ early work, notably the five
volume Hermes series. The Parasite marks the summation of Serres’ interest in the
topic. It is the point at which Serres discovers in his raking over of information theory
a kind of rupture which exposes his thinking to something else entirely. Nevertheless
Leibniz is a strong presence in The Parasite. In fact, Leibniz was the subject of Serres’
doctoral thesis (see Serres, 2003). In a way The Parasite is also an attempt to return
information theory to its own points of departure (which include but are not limited to
the monadology).

Although he is not mentioned in the text, Henri Atlan’s (1974) important contribution
to information theory is the most important precursor. Atlan noted the ambiguous role
played by noise in the relationship of sender and receiver. Noise stands outside this
relationship. It is, in a sense, the backdrop against which the communication happens.
It is what gives communication its sense. It makes the contrast with the signal. But
noise cannot be kept simply in the background. Properly speaking speaker and
receiver are themselves operated within noise – they are up to their elbows in it, like
the two flailing combatants in Goya’s famous painting (which Serres alludes to in The
Parasite and inspires his later Natural Contract).

Noise cannot then be properly eliminated from the relationship. It is always there. But
the value of noise is vastly different according to one’s position. For the speaker,
noise will always be an obstruction – it gets in the way and must be overcome. But for
the receiver, noise need not play this role. It may have its own informational value
when interposed with the signal. Think of slips of the tongue or the potential additive
effects of talking at cross-purposes. All this can be of interest for the receiver.

So noise and signal here come to form a peculiar pairing which is perceived very
differently according to the position of the observer. Serres illustrates this with an
example on the burden placed on a host at a dinner party who hears the unmistakable
sound of a phone in the room next door:
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At the feast everyone is talking. At the door of the room there is a ringing noise,
the telephone. Communication cuts conversation, the noise interrupting the
messages. As soon as I start to talk with this new interlocutor, the sounds of the
banquet become noise for the new ‘us’. The system has shifted. If I approach the
table, the noise slowly becomes conversation. In the system, noise and message
exchange roles according to the position of the observer and the action of the actor,
but they are transformed into one another … They make order or disorder. (Serres,
1982: 68)

The host is distracted by the phone. It is noise, invading the pleasant repartee of the
dinner table. Maybe she tries to ignore it. But it keeps on ringing. Like a taunt.
Answer me! Answer me! The noise grows in strength as a signal as the host fails to
repress its intervention (thus as Serres describes ‘the repressed returns to parasite what
I’m talking about. Such a force is in the third position that I repress’ p.78). The host
gives in and crosses to the other room. At the threshold, at the point of commitment,
the noise becomes fully signal. And now it is the delightful conversation of the dinner
table which becomes noise which the host must repress in order to concentrate on the
conversation with her new interlocutor. Everything happens at the threshold, Serres
surmises. It is this boundary between two systems that is made permeable by the
noise-signal interruption. This point becomes Serres’ central concern – ‘I have found
a spot where, give or take one vibration, moving a hair’s breadth in either direction
causes the noises to become messages and the messages noises’ (p.67). Thinking what
goes on at this boundary, the most intense point of relation between the two systems
or stations, is the extended task of the entire text.

The third man argument

We began with two statioms, but those two rapidly became three with the automatic
addition of the signal-noise relation. In point of fact, Serres notes, ‘as soon as we are
two, we are already three or four. We learned that a long time ago’ (p.57). There is
always logically a third space between us, a third space in the process of opening up.
The lesson is already there in the Platonic dialogues. Which, Serres shows, are rarely
limited to two participants. There is always someone else hammering at the door,
another interlocutor demanding entry to the conversation. In the Symposium Agathon
and Socrates’ dialogue is interrupted by Alcibiades. Whose conversation is in turn
interrupted by Agathon. The three interlocutors circulate between the triad of sender-
reciever-signal/noise. All speak with one another. All interrupt one another.

Serres observes that this triadic structure is common in classical philosophy. You and
I speak. We start to disagree. Or rather we discover that we lack grounds on which we
might agree. We stand in need of mediation. We need something else, a third space
wherein our perspectives might be weighed and co-ordinated. Thus we appeal to
something outside of our relationship, usually by invoking the ideal or the power of
geometric demonstration. As soon as we are two, we are already three. But to what
extent does this appeal resolve matters? Serres imagines the invocation of the ideal to
be a kind of interruption: Plato is on the phone, he has something to offer us. But the
condition of taking his call is the transmutation of our signal into noise. We turn
toward the interrupter and find ourselves up to our necks in noise, in our own mess.
And what does his signal offer? It tells of another dialogue, of other protagonists. He
gives us not a resolution but merely more noise.
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This is what classical philosophy offers us, Serres says, a ‘third man argument’. There
is always another space, another place, another person with whom, through whom we
will resolve our current dispute. But as soon as we attend to this third man, we find
that the relationship of signal and noise has shifted. Their interruption promised
everything. But when we invite them in we find they have nothing to give us. Merely
stories of other disputes, other feasts, other hosts. Our attempts to resolve our
immediate communicative difficulties merely enmire us in yet further, more complex
chains of communication, all with the same corresponding difficulties. The situation
can be described in the following way:

This third can be invited on the bed, to eat, to drink, to sing or to praise. He is
included. He can disturb the two others, and situated in the very middle, he
prevents them from seeing or understanding each other: he intercepts all their
relations. They have to pass by him to pass each other the cup, or something in
general; they must pass by him for passing to occur. For the disruption to stop, he
must be excluded. (p.247)

When the third man is included, he intercepts our relationship. We have to do

everything by him, through him. We cannot even pass the wine, dammit! He takes
from our table and gives nothing in return. And so we must exclude him, bar him
from the table. In this way hospitality begets hostility. But then we cannot speak any
longer. We lack the external court of appeal. More than this, we cannot understand
one another without the third space as backdrop, as grounds against which our signals
can be recognised as such. Hence the ancient ineluctability of the ‘third man’ who
hovers at the threshold. Will we invite him in or act together to drive him out?
Everything happens at the boundary between the two acts.

Rats Meals

As soon as we are two, we are already three or four. A fable from La Fontaine allows
Serres to demonstrate the point. The town rat invites his cousin the country rat to dine
with him in the tax farmer’s house. That is, in the city. The two cousins feast on the
leftovers on the carpet in the farmer’s dining room, whilst the farmer sleeps upstairs.
Suddenly their feast is interrupted by noise outside the door. The two cousins flee.
They await the abating of the noise. The farmer, roused by rat’s carousing returns to
his slumbers. The town rat urges his cousin to return to the feast. But the poor thing
cannot bear it: ‘Let’s go to the country where we eat only soup, but quietly and
without interruption’ (p.3).

The fable can be diagrammed in the following way:

[insert fig.1 about here]

Recall that the feast takes place in the house of a tax farmer. He produces nothing.
The fine food he has on offer comes from elsewhere and is rendered to him as levy.
Hence we must imagine a position (P0) where the foods are produced. All that
follows will be a form of theft, or better a kind of parasitism. The tax farmer parasites
the producer – he then occupies (P1). The town rat then parasites the farmer, seizing
the position (P2). The invitation to the country cousins makes space for a third
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parasitic position (P3). So we have a kind of chain of parasites, which forms a clear
sequence where each position in turn successfully parasitises the former. We might
imagine such a chain stretching on without end. But it does end. With the knock at the
door. With a noise from outside which causes the chain to fall apart. But only
temporarily. The town rat returns, the parasites come back. Here is the first lesson:
you will never be rid of the parasite, send him away and he returns in numbers.

This fable serves as the means for Serres to introduce the parasite. It is the parasite
who offers up the promise of the third space. It is the parasite who interrupts us
continually, who makes such a racket. It is the parasite who we must invite to the feast
and who we must equally be impelled to expel. This multiple sense of parasite is
helped by the various meanings of the word in French: a social creature – he who
feeds without paying at my table; a biological organism – like an insect or a virus; and
static or noise which interferes with a signal. Thus the parasite is ingrate, bloodsucker
and interrupter.

Note though the nature of the chain formed by the parasites in the fable. We will have
to leave aside the question of who or what does the producing for now (P0). But from
this point onwards every position is a parasitic one where ‘the parasite parasitises the
parasites’ (p.55). This is not so much a chain as a cascade, where the produce flows
down through the chain of parasites. But this chain, this cascade, is not entirely
random. Each link has a kind of specificity. Indeed, it is Serres’ central claim that the
singular attribute of the parasite 'is its specificity’ (p.230). The tax farmer is a farmer,
like those whom he taxes. The town rat is small enough to eat undetected in his house.
The country rat is his cousin. There is a chain of tiny specificities that makes the
cascade of parasitism possible.

And this chain is itself not entirely random. It has its own direction. Each link is
formed by a one-way relationship of taking without giving. Production is carried off,
it is dragged down. The parasite takes without giving. It makes an unequal exchange
which moves the chain away from any form of equilibrium. If we imagine production
as the initial system, every act of parasitism (or parasitism squared, cubed, multiplied
endlessly) drags the productive system away from its equilibrium point. It takes a
further act of interruption – the noise at the door to break the parasitic chain and
restore the initial state. But the parasites always come back … The game they play is
to always come last, to be in the last position in the parasitic chain. And thus to stand,
open mouthed, ready to absorb all of what flows down the chain. The last in line
collects all.

The Positive Work of Parasitism

Why do we tolerate the parasite? Why do we not simply drive him out? Why must we
accept his constant interruptions? First of all, since, as we have described, we are
dependent on the mediation of the parasite. We require noise, interruption in order to
have signal, convivial conversation. We who are senders and receivers, stations to one
another are united by our ambiguous relation to the parasite. Our relationship
logically depends upon his interruptions for its sense. In this way our relations are
always in some way failures. Or as Serres puts it:
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Systems work because they do not work. Nonfunctioning remains essential for
functioning … Given, two stations and a channel. They exchange messages. If the
relation succeeds, it is perfect, optimum, and immediate; it disappears as a relation.
If it is there, if it exists, that means it has failed. It is only mediation. Relation is
nonrelation. And that is what a parasite is. The channel carries the flow, but it
cannot disappear as a channel, and it brakes (breaks) the flow, more or less. But
perfect, successful, optimum communication no longer includes any mediation.
And the canal disappears into immediacy. There would be no spaces of
transformation anywhere. There are channels, and thus there must be noise. No
canal without noise. The real is not rational. The best relation would be no relation.
By definition it does not exist; if it exists, it is not observable. (p.79)

The very fact of communication, as we classically understand it, implies an

interrupted relationship. It implies some noise, some disruption. As soon as we are
involved in mediation, that is, as soon as we are in a relation, we are involved with the
parasite. This presents us with the paradox that things work precisely because they do
not work perfectly. Our relations imply a form of non-relation, imply an interception
or diversion of relation. Successful functioning involves an element of dysfunction.

The parasite comes in. He is ‘an interceptor of every relation in general’ (p.79). Or
better still the parasite is ‘the relation itself’ (p.79). It is both ‘being and nonbeing,
relation and nonrelation’ (p.79). Which gives rise to the curious proposition that:

nothing exists more than he does since he is always there in our relations and in the
system in which we live, but nothing exists less than he does since a certain noise
makes him immediately disappear. (p.79)

This leads to the problem of identifying what the parasite is – is it a being or a

relation? A thing or an operator? Or conversely a kind on nonbeing, nonrelation. We
cannot settle this question immediately. Serres supplies instead a provisional
definition: the parasite is always to the side of our relations (para- to be on the side
of), always ready to intercept our relations, to carry them off in some other direction.
In this sense it is the parasite is the very becoming of our relations.

Another fable, by way of illustration. A poor man is starving with an empty belly. He
approaches the kitchen door of a restaurant. The smells of the fine food inside waft
over him and he finds that his hunger is somewhat sated. An angry kitchen hand come
out and demands that the poor man pay for having taken his fill, for the services
rendered. An argument ensues. A third man arrives and offers to settle the matter:

Give me a coin, he said. The wretch did so, frowning. He put the coin down on the
sidewalk and with the heel of his shoe made it ring a bit. This noise, he said, giving
his decision, is pay enough for the aroma of the tasty dishes. (p.34-5)

Serres explains the fable in the following way. We have two orders, two systems. One
where coins are exchanged for food, and another where sounds are exchanged for
smells. No exchange was thought possible between these two systems. No
communication was considered possible. The two systems are, in effect, completely
indiscernible to one another. The action of the parasite – the third man – is to open up
a channel where a new kind of exchange is possible, where coins are transformed into
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sounds which are exchanged with food transformed into smell. Communication
becomes possible. This is something new, this is a transformation or a becoming of
each system, or rather the two stations which now stand in relation to one another, by
virtue of parasitism:

The parasite invents something new. Since he does not eat like everyone else he
invents a new logic. He crosses the exchange, makes it into a diagonal. He does not
barter; he exchanges money. He wants to give his voice for matter, (hot) air for
solid. (p.35)

This is genuinely something new. Or in informational terms a new form of

complexity. The parasite provokes complexity, he engineers difference by
intercepting the relation. Serres summarises this unexpected gain by virtue of the
parasite in terms of three parasitic operations: analysis, paralysis, catalysis. The
parasite stands apart from the stations, it intercepts their relations. This is the
traditional analytic move – stand apart from your subjects, observe but do not be
observed. Take but do not give. This operation induces an interruption, a kind of
mini-catastrophe in the system. Its functions are disturbed, its relations are taken away
in a different direction. Temporary paralysis. But this soon gives way to a different
level of functioning, to a new kind of relationship. It works because it does not work.
The parasite acts as a catalyst for complexity. This latter complexification comes not
merely from the different forms of communication that the parasite makes possible,
but also from the active attempts by the stations to expel the parasite. The diners
collude together to expel the univited guest. The farmer wakes in the middle of the
night hearing rats voices. The host interrupts the parasite and it all starts over again.
But not exactly in the same way.

Production and Value

This leads us to the rather unpleasant seeming conclusion that the parasite is able to
live off thin air. Or perhaps that by drawing upon from initial source of production a
myriad of parasites are able to derive their own meagre surplus value. Can this really
be the case? And what of this production – the P0? How does come about? A last
fable. A paralysed man crawls on his hands and knees. He is wasting away ‘rotting
away in a black corner’ (p.35). Then one day he espies a blind man. The blind man
stumbles over every obstacle and seems in all likelihood to be liable to injure or kill
himself by accident. The paralysed man offers him a deal: carry me on your shoulders
and I will be your guide. Together the two make a kind of whole. What is the nature
of their bargain, the exchange? The blind man has energy, the paralysed man offers
information. If the latter can act as the guide, or better the governor (that is, the
rudder, as cybernetics reminds us), it is only on condition that this producer lacks
information. Hence:

Those who have energy necessarily cannot have information; thus, those with
information can do without energy. Information is as precious as it is rare. Thus
this rarity has to be provoked. (p.36-7)

The value of information comes from its rarity. Conversely there is always enough
production. Its rarity is artificially created. Information always trumps production by
coming after it, by intercepting production and steering it in a different direction. Or
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put more simply, for Serres, ‘matter is energy; its form is information’ (p.169). At the
top of the parasitic chain is pure matter, production. Each parasitic transformation is a
successive determination of form. Parasites shape production, they lend it direction.

But what of this pure matter, production-in-itself? Is this a space somehow outside of
parasitism? Which would make it the timeless origins of the parasitic economy, which
is also, after a fashion, the monetary economy. We would then have identified the
formal conditions on which economy is based in a pure act of production. Serres
rejects this move by considering how production itself get going. Consider the orgins
of agriculture. What is needed to grow crops? A cleared space. A space where nothing
grows, which is tilled and ready for planting. How is such a space derived? By an act
of separation, the forming of boundaries, the establishing of property. Inside: nothing,
a blank space awaiting the seeds. Outside: weeds, noise. How long do you think the
parasites will stay outside Serres asks? For there is always a hole in the fence, a
wound. The system is open. Something comes in.

The real origin then is the making of blank space and its simultaneous parasitism. The
ground is cleared and the parasite comes back in. First a cutting, a division, a
selection. This makes an abstract, blank or white space. This purification of space
intrigues Serres because it suggests that the cultural and the economic share a
common origin. The space for the temple and the space for the agora are made
through the same operation of division and separation:

Agriculture and culture have the same origin or the same foundation, a white spot
that realizes a rupture of equilibrium, a clean spot constituted through expulsion. A
spot of propriety or cleanliness, a spot of belonging. (p.179)

Such a white spot proves to be a curious origin, a strange way of making a foundation,
since it is in itself nothing. A pure abstraction, an emptiness. At one level this is
exactly the paradox we ought to expect when we try to think the originary – it is
always ‘an empty set’ (p.180). Nothing can happen here in this space in perfect
equilibrium. No signal, no information, no time. History then begins with the
parasitism of this space, the tiny deviation which makes the blank space diversify.
The parasite is then the motor of history, or rather this occurs through the parasite’s
seizing of the white space. And this is done through occupation. The parasites swarm
in, they occupy space. Which is, Serres reminds us, a very different matter to holding
a station (imagine the doorkeeper who tries and fails to entry of a frenzied crowd).
The tumultuous noise of the parasites overruns space and in the hubbub that ensues
history gets going. Signals abound.

Thus the parasitic relationship is what properly constitutes history. Serres calls this
‘abuse value’ – taking without giving. Abuse value comes before use value. First the
white space, the paradoxical origin in perfect equilibrium. Perfect exchange. Then
abuse value, disequilibrium, a different kind of exchange becomes possible. Whatever
use value then follows comes about only through the struggle of parasites to displace
one another. It emerges in the bifurcated systems of communication which result.But
the white space returns. Like the zero figure in most mathematical systems, the white
space is to powerful a logical operator to lose. Someone knocks on the door, the chain
collapses. White space is reconstituted. History stops. But the parasites always come
back… Indeed they are crucial to the formation of the space since ‘the activity of the
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parasite is parallel to that of selection. They are two operators on the same structure’
(p.185).

Thus Serres invents a double of the parasite. If the parasite is nearly always minuscule
and specific, Serres imagines another operator which is non-specific and
immeasurable. This he calls ‘blank domino’. The blank domino obviously refers to
the token in the game which is without any pre-determined value. It is blank and may
then take on any particular kind of value depending on how the play unfolds - it can
go in any position. For Serres, blank domino is the operation where the host jumps to
the last parasitic position. The farmer wakes. The dinner party host steals from the
uninvited guest. There is a change in position here, a circulation in position there. The
host takes on all the positions, even those of the parasite. He jumps from P1 to P4.
And in this way the chain is broken, albeit temporarily. The following pattern
emerges - White space – Parasitism – Blank domino – White space.

What we are arriving at is two sorts of operations, two sorts of movements. The
direction or disequilbirum of parasitism; and the interruption, the selection and
starting over of blank domino. Having turned notions of communication and
organisation on their head, we need to finally see how Serres deploys these notions in
a highly distinct account of their role in the unfolding of social relations.

What Living Together Is

Serres calls The Parasite the ‘book of evil’ (p. 253). This with good cause. He asserts
that life is founded on abuse value, on a one-way relation of taking without giving.
That we cannot do without parasites, that parasitism is the essential condition of any
form of communication, any manner of relation. This is a truly demonic argument.
How then is living together possible? How is it that we appear to be able to tame our
parasites, to live together in the company of parasites with one another?

The point is best put by considering the Hobbesian degree zero of social relations: the
war of all against all. Here the social contract, the coming together of the people as
Leviathan, around the figurehead is what holds the war or all against all in check.
Serres claims instead that war is not a generalised state. We are not engaged in a fight
to the death with one another. Rather, war is specified, directed against one person in
particular. This makes it ludicrous to talk of war: this is murder. Or rather expulsion,
sacrifice. Here the influence of Rene Girard’s (1988) account of the mimetic structure
of desire is clear. In brief, Girard argues that the desire takes the form of a mimesis
where we fashion our desires on those of another who will stand as model. We take
on their object of desire. But this model then comes to appear as rival. Hence rivalries
become endemic. The solution to the proliferation of rivals is through the nomination
of scapegoats. The scapegoat will be excluded, sacrificed. They will act as the
generalised model whose destruction will supposedly free up the collective objects of
desire. But of course the sacrifice of the scapegoat as generalised model means that
we will now be bound together in our collective guilt at being party to the murder of
she who was the basis of our desires.

Serres turns Girard’s argument to a state of generalised parasitism:

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History hides the fact that man is the universal parasite, that everything and
everyone around him is a hospitable space. Plants and animals are always his
hosts; man is always necessarily their guest. Always taking, never giving. He
bends the logic of exchange and of giving in his favour when he is dealing with
nature as a whole. When he is dealing with his kind, he continues to do so; he
wants to be the parasite of man as well. And his kind want to be so too. Hence
rivalry. (p.24)

Parasites will inevitable become rivals since mimetic relations of parasitism abound.
We parasitise nature and by extension when dealing with our fellow humans seek to
parasitise them also. Which serves in turn as the model for others. But if we follow
the logic of Girard’s argument, then this likely war of all against all becomes the war
of all against one. The collective will turn towards the scapegoat who must be
expelled, murdered. But who will be nominated? Who will be ‘it’?

Serres turns to the story of Joseph in Genesis. Joseph certainly seems like a scapegoat,
a victim. Cast out by rivalrous brothers, abandoned in a well, sold to merchants and
then sold again into slavery - he is an archetypal scapegoat. But Joseph’s story is
paralleled by that of Tamar. She is married to each brother in turn, but yet rejected by
each. Eventually mistaken for a prostitute, she is a classic victim. But neither of these
two victims is murdered. What interests Serres instead is the way both Joseph and
Tamar take on multiple positions in the story. Rather like a tiny theatre company,
where two actors assume all the roles in the play, Joseph and Tamar seem to be
constantly switching positions in the story. It is as though they take all the possible
positions. And then finally, just when it seems that the fateful moment of sacrifice has
arrived, both avoid their fate by substituting something else: an animal, a promise, a
symbol. Serres gives a name, a class, to Joseph & Tamar:

I shall call this object a joker. The joker is often a madman, as we know. He is wild
… This white object, like a white domino, has no value so as to have every value.
It has no identity, but its identity, its unique character, its difference, as they say, is
to be, indifferently, this or that unit of a given set. The joker is king or jack, ace or
seven, or deuce. Joseph is a joker; Tamar, queen, just, despised, whore, is also a
joker. A is b, c, d, etc. (p.160)

The joker is abstract and blank, like a mobile white space which can be deployed in
any position. It can take on all the possible positions. Played in the middle or end, the
joker causes the play, the sequence to bifurcate. Jokers are ‘wild’ in the sense that the
are unpredictable – we do not know what will happen when they are put into play.
Thus the joker, like the parasite, is an engineer of difference, of complexity. It leads
relations to go astray. It permits communication between stations where none was
previously possible – ‘the joker changes; it is a token of exchange; it is multivalent
and bivalent at first’ (p.161). But whilst the joker is less specific, less determined that
the parasite, it is still a token, subject to a circumscribed logic. It cannot be played
anywhere. It works only in a specific system of exchange, in a given set-up. If the
parasite is the essence of relations, the joker is the essence of stations. It is the token
that may mimic any given station: it becomes all the stations.
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Serres then turns the notion of joker back onto Girard’s scapegoating schema. Who
will be it? Who will be excluded. Serres notes that this question is precisely that
addressed by a variety of games:

We have all played the game of hunt-the-slipper or button, button, who’s got the
button. The one who is caught with the furet has to pay a forfeit. The furet points
him out. One person is marked with the sign of the furet. Condemned, he goes to
the centre; he’s ‘it’. (p.225)

What then is this token that circulates in such games? It is a species of joker. Serres
names it ‘quasi-object’. The name is misleading, however. Serres has in mind a token
which does more than simply keep a game going. This is more than a simple object. It
is ‘quasi’ object since it is undetermined, its particular qualities are unimportant. Its
standing comes from the way it moves as a token. It is this movement that holds
together the players:

This quasi-object, when being passed, makes the collective, if it stops, it makes the
individual …the moving furet weaves the ‘we’, the collective; if it stops, it marks
the ‘I’. (p.239)

Consider a game of rugby. The players are oriented around the ball, the token. They
act with relation to the token, which is like a little sun around whom the players
orient. The players become almost extensions of the token – its attributes. They are
the means by which it passes, their movements have the sole aim of maintaining the
play, of keeping the token in play. In so doing the token weaves the collective. That
is, the relationships between the players is defined by how they position themselves
with regard to the token. It is the movement of the token which defines their relations.
Games, as we know, often have their origins in cruelty and terror. And here is the
terrifying aspect. Who will be caught in possession of the token? Who will be left
with it when the play stops. She will be ‘it’:

The quasi-object that is a marker of the subject is an astonishing constructor of

intersubjectivity. We know, through it, how and when we are subjects and when
and how we are no longer subjects. ‘We’: what does that mean? We are precisely
the fluctuating moving back and forth of ‘I’. The ‘I’ in the game is the token
exchanged. And this passing, this network of passes, these vicariances of subjects
weave the collection. (p.227)

The token is a marker of the subject. She who is caught with the token is it. We others
form the indivisible mass, we are the mute collective who will turn on the ‘I’, who is
now victim, the excluded. The quasi-object marks out these ‘I’s, it is the moving back
and forth of this marker, these provisional subjects. In this sense Serres refers to the
token as equally quasi-subject. But this pointing out is ambiguous. To be the ‘I’ is to
enjoy a privileged position. One is able to influence play – shoot for goal, make a
heroic move. But equally one is potential victim – the fool, the one to be excluded.
Hence the collective turns around the endless selection and passing on of ‘I’s.

So where we arrive at is a very different conception of the collective, of what being

together is. Recall that the point of departure was information theory, and that each of
the moves Serres makes are done through exploiting the logic of information theory.
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First of all the recognition that signal and noise are indissociable, then the embodying
of the ambiguity of this relation in the figure of the parasite. Next the generalisation of
the parasitic operation to all relations, whether communicative, economic or cultural.
Then the identification of abuse value at the heart of all value, but this as contingent
on the twin operation of selection and parasitism together. That is, the question of
origins. Then, finally, the question of how parasitism can be turned back on itself.
How the cycle can be restarted, how a kind of equilibrium appears in the constant
push to disequilibrium.

Which is why we arrive at this endless, provisional circulation of the quasi-object.

That which allows parasites to live together by weaving them into a collective under
the threat of sacrifice. All may parasitise. All may be excluded. We live under the
threat of being ‘it’. Contrast this with the communicational utopia encouraged
Habermasian social theory, and advocated, albeit it with more ambiguous intents, by
new management styles. Whereas this latter imagines that the hallmark of successful
relationship building is openness and transparency in communication, Serres
demonstrates that it is precisely the uncertainty, the problematic nature of
communicating and the necessity of passing by way of unreliable mediators that
makes relationships possible at all. The drive to ‘clean up’ communication by driving
out these mediators, these tiny parasites, is then entirely misfounded. We must learn
to live parasitism through a range of strategies, which include, but are not limited to,
the circulation of blank dominos, jokers and quasi-objects. Organising is the art of
tolerating and forging relationships with this hybrid range of mediators. There is no
romantic era of aesthetically pure communication. We are, we always have been, up
to our necks in noise and may as well start acknowledging it.

References

Atlan, H. (1974) On a formal definition of organization. Journal of Theoretical

Biology, 45, 295-304.
Cameron, D. (2000) Good to talk? London: Sage.
Girard, R. (1988) Violence and the sacred. London: Continuum.
Habermas, J. (1988) Legimation crisis. Cambridge: Polity.
Lyotard, J.-F. ([1979]1984) The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Serres, M. ([1980]1982) The Parasite. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Serres, M. ([1990]1995) The Natural Contract. E. MacArthur and W. Paulson (trans).
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Serres, M. (2003) System of Leibniz. Manchester: Clinamen Press.
Serres, M. with Latour, B. (1995) Conversations on Science, Culture and Time. R.
Lapidus (trans). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Shannon, C. & Weaver, W. (1949) The mathematical theory of communication.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Weiner, N. (1932) Back to Leibniz! Physics reoccupies an abandoned position. The
Technology Review, 32, 201-224.
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Fig.1 after Serres, 1982 p. 4