> Issue #28,
> Notown
> Good news: A few hipsters are rediscovering Detroit. Bad news: everything
> else.
> Thomas J. Sugrue
>
> The life cycle of parasite
>
>
>
> Conceived in the language of a single philosopher, the new life
> form—probably at this stage at its maximal virulence, such that it may even
> “call into question” aspects of the social structure that forms its
> substrate—multiplies rapidly until all philosophical language is colonized.
>
>
>
> Foreign scholars visiting the focal point of the outbreak are infected
> (often visiting precisely so as to be infected!) and act as vectors for the
> colonization of academic language abroad. The first stepdown of virulence
> may occur at this stage of development, because the carriers take
> prophylactic measures to ensure the persistence of the substrate, at least
> as it provides a medium for career advancement.
>
>
>
> By means of the milieu control enforced in universities, students are
> infected and carry the parasite into the general culture both as members of
> the “cultural class,” that is, those who provide cultural products that
> meet the expectations conditioned by the presence of the parasite in the
> remainder of the former students, and those who comprise the class of
> “cultural consumers.” The necessary adaptation of the parasite to its host
> market eventuates in another stepdown in virulence.
>
>
>
> At this point, the host culture can continue to attempt to fight off the
> intruder; a more successful evolutionary strategy, however, usually is to
> allow the parasite to occupy an ecological niche where symbiosis can
> proceed. This often takes the form of a geographical concentration of the
> infected in an area that had had dubious survivability. Perhaps the most
> remarkable stage of the parasitic life cycle occurs now, when it can
> revivify the niche, thus allowing the substrate to restore circulation into
> what had been dying tissue.
>
>
>
> Thus the parasite, born as a potential threat to the life of the social
> body, becomes a means of extending and enhancing its life.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>