Description
With increased attention on biopolitics, climate change and the Anthropocene, International Relations and Security Studies have increasingly focused on life, its protection and survival. When ethical questions are raised in this context, they have overwhelmingly centred on human life (Nyman and Burke, 2016). Taking life in the Anthropocene seriously, however, we need a posthuman understanding of what makes life live. Most forms of life actually live on, in or through other forms – they are parasitical (Zimmer, 2000). The paper explores how ‘parasites’ and ‘parasitism’ first emerged from the social world before passing back and forth through biology, picking up meaning at each turn. Taking its lead from Donna Haraway (2007), the paper uses recent advances in parasitology to argue that we relate to others (human and non-human) parasitically through complex networks of living dependence. This creates responsibilities and obligations that must be meticulously explored and then taken up in individual political contexts without moralistic rules to provide guidance or security.
