Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures Modernist Parasites

This book analyzes the unstable, shifting perceptions of parasites in biological and social settings after 1900. It argues that “parasite” is a dangerous label for nonhuman animals and minorities, yet many modernist writers reimagine the parasite as the embodiment of dependency in a posthumanist world. Modernist Parasites: Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, Post-1900 analyzes biological and social parasites in the political, scientific, and literary imagination. With the rise of Darwinism, eugenics, and parasitology in the late nineteenth century, Sebastian Williams posits that the “parasite” came to be humanity’s ultimate other—a dangerous antagonist. But many authors such as Isaac Rosenberg, John Steinbeck, Franz Kafka, Clarice Lispector, Nella Larsen, and George Orwell reconsider parasitism. Ultimately, parasites inherently depend on others for their survival, illustrating the limits of ethical models that privilege the discrete individual above interdependent communities.