serres in Dockray, Forster & Public Office 2018
iminate the
central server, not by destroying it, but by distributing it across all of the
users. Individuals are then not _just_ users, but also hosts. What kind of
subject is this user-host, especially as compared to the user of the server?
Michel Serres writes in _The Parasite_ :
> “It is raining; a passer-by comes in. Here is the interrupted meal once
more. Stopped for only a moment, since the traveller is asked to join the
diners. His host does not have to ask him twice. He accepts the invitati
might be dangerous not to decide who is
the host and who is the guest, who gives and who receives, who is the parasite
and who is the table d’hote, who has the gift and who has the loss, and where
hospitality begins with hospitality.” — Michel Serres, The Parasite (Baltimore
and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 15–16.
Serres notes that _guest_ and _host_ are the same word in French; we might say
the same for _client_ and _server_ in a distributed protocol. And we will
embrace this multiplying hospitality, giving and taking without measure.
### The role of institutions i
serres in Thylstrup 2019
what we might call an infrapolitics of parasitism.
In _The Parasite_ , a strange and fabulating book that brings together
information theory and cybernetics, physics, philosophy, economy, biology,
politics, and folk tales, French philosopher Michel Serres constructs an
argument about the conceptual figure of the parasite to explore the parasitic
nature of social relations. In a dizzying array of images and thought-
constructs, Serres argues against the idea of a balanced exchange of energy,
suggesting instead that our world is characterized by one parasite stealing
energy by feeding on another organism. For this purpose he reminds us of the
three meanings of parasite in the Frenc
rs. The third
meaning, however, is less known in most languages except French: here the
parasite is static noise or interference in a channel, interrupting the
seemingly balanced flow of things, mediating and thus transforming relations.
Indeed, for Serres, the parasite is itself a disruptive relation (rather than
entity). The parasite can also change positions of sender, receiver, and
noise, making it exceedingly difficult to discern parasite from nonparasite;
indeed, to such an extent that Serres himself exclaims “I no longer really
know how to say it: the parasite parasites the parasites.”1 Serres thus uses
his parasitic model to make a claim about the nature of cybernetic
technologies and the flow of information, arguing that “cybernetics gets more
and more complicated, makes a chain, then a network. Yet it is founded on the
theft of information, quite a simple thing.”2 The logic of the parasite,
Serres argues, is the logic of the interrupter, the “excluded third” or
“uninvited guest” who intercepts and confuses relations in a process of theft
that has a value both of destruction and a value of construction. The parasite
is thus a generative force, inventing, affecting, and transforming relations.
Hence, parasitism refers not only to an act of interference but also to an
interruption that “invents something new.”3
Michel Serres’s then-radical philosophy of the parasite is today echoed by a
broader recognition of the parasite as not only a dangerous entity, but also a
necessary mediator. Indeed, as Jeanette Samyn notes, we are today witnessing a
“pro-parasitic” movemen
ty based on a structured set of
gift exchange and social relationships among consumers.”70 This chapter,
however, ends with a third proposal: that shadow libraries produce a
parasitical form of infrapolitics. In _The Parasite_ , philosopher Michel
Serres speculates a way of thinking about relations of transfer—in social,
biological, and informational contexts—as fundamentally parasitic, that is, a
subtractive form of “taking without giving.” Serres contrasts the parasitic
model with established models of society based on notions such as exchange and
gift giving.71 Shadow libraries produce an infrapolitics that denies the
distinction between producers and subtractors of value, allowing us instea
hadow libraries, and in many respects shadow
libraries bring to the fore the same cultural-political questions as other
forms of mass digitization: questions of territorial imaginaries,
infrastructures, regulation, speed, and ethics.
## Notes
1. Serres 1982, 55. 2. Serres 1982, 36. 3. Serres 1982, 36. 4. Samyn 2012. 5.
I stick with “shadow library,” a term that I first found in Lawrence Liang’s
(2012) writings on copyright and have since seen meaningfully unfolded in a
variety of contexts. Part of its strength is its sidestepping
racy with a Secret
Codeword,” _BBC Trending_ , October 21, 2015,
2016. 69. Gardner and Gardner 2017. 70. Giesler 2006, 283. 71. Serres 2013, 8.
# III
Diagnosing Mass Digitization
# 5
Lost in Mass Digitization
## The Desire and Despair of Large-Scale Collections
In 1995, founding editor of _Wired_ magazine Kevin Kelly mused upon how a
digital library would look:
> Two decade
tt, James C. 2009. _Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts_. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Display 200
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characters around the word.
268. Seddon, Nicholas. 2013. _Government Contracts: Federal, State and Local_. Annandale, Australia: The Federation Press.
269. Serres, Michel. 2013. _The Parasite_. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
270. Sherratt, Tim. 2013. “From Portals to Platforms: Building New Frameworks for User Engagement.” National Library of Australia, November 5.