THE UNSYSTEMATIC SURVIVAL OF SYSTEMS: THE PARASITE, THE JOKER AND THE BRICOLEUR IN MICHEL SERRES AND CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

Abstract

With our increasing reliance on systems from information theory to economics, it is important to understand how systems are constructed, how they break down and how they preserve themselves. The philosopher Michel Serres in his work The Parasite showed how systems can never preserve their order in a pure manner; they always involve noise and lost signals. He explores this by employing the idea of parasitism from biology. But the problem remains of how systems maintain themselves in the face of parasitism. This paper will explore the concept of bricolage conceived by structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in his seminal work The Savage Mind. This concept can be found within a single ambiguous quotation by Serres in The Parasite, but remains undeveloped. This article will therefore develop these connections between bricolage and parasitism, and show how bricolage is important to the adaptation of any system to change.