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Parasitism and Multispecies World
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Format:
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Publication Date: 13 October 2026
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ISBN: 9781801361323
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Pages: 100
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Imprint: Anthem Press

The book discusses how the figure of the parasite and concept of parasitism open up new avenues of thinking about human, other-than-human and more-than-human world-making. The parasite helps us in our understanding of not only socio-political relations but also the relational turn in contemporary ecological and biological thought. The figure of the parasite has been employed in relational thinking and deconstructionist thinking, but it has never been used in understanding ecological crises in the Anthropocene. This scholarly work not only locates the figure of the parasite in a multispecies world, it also espouses parasitism as a mode of thinking and parasite–parasite as a mode of living. The book promotes a unique form of multispecies thinking and doing that is necessary for survival.
"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
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.
List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements ; Pre-position; Para- or Thinking Relationality with Parasite ; Composition and De-composition; Parasite-Parasite; The (Non)Intimacy of Strangers ; Bibliography