Parasitic Economies (Topoi B-3-4)

The subject of the project is the literary history of parasites, a history that from antiquity onward has been set down in a variety of genres: comedy, Menippean satire, novella, essay and autobiography. The explicit or implicit contrariness of drastic rituals of exclusion and the subliminal negativity of order have combined to bestow elementary aesthetic attractiveness upon parasitic relations, a phenomenon that has been observed since antiquity.