Parasites, principles and the problem of attachment to place

Abstract

This article is concerned with exploring the idea of places as providing persons with nourishment. This version of person-place relations is displayed in a paper by McHugh and, in provocative fashion, in Michel Serres's analysis of the human condition as a parasitic one. Unlike McHugh, Serres combines his analysis of parasites with a concern that principled actors may be insufficiently attached to places. His views are revealed in his interpretations of works by Molière and Plato. By reinterpreting these works, I try to suggest that Serres's well-founded scepticism as to the level of commitment of principled actors to the places that, as he rightly points out, are nourishing them, may not apply to the sub-set of principled actors who deserve to be called particular.

Cold shoulders and napkins handed: gestures of responsibility

“…In his current work on place, moreover, Raffel (2004) argues that we need to extend such claims, and in so doing to examine further how we take responsibility for situated places (or not). At this point, gestures, set alongside talk but bringing something more to the situation, are taken as intimately bound up with – constituted by, and in certain respects constitutive of – a place such as this café (in this neighbourhood in this city).…”

Other Ways: Landscapes of Commuting

“…In the video fragment we catch something of the care with which this is done by the very fact that coming to agreement on our route puts our very togetherness at stake. Even on the road Nina and Niamh remain members of a community whose relationship to landscape here is one of sharing it with others (Raffel, 2006).…”

Arendt, role theory and the ethical evaluation of action

“…I would suggest that something akin to making their own behavior an object for themselves for such an actor would require thinking not just about how to do it well but orienting to … whether it is right to do it in the first place’ (1999: 6.1–2). In this case, the social theorist reformulates the concept of role to include the possibility of reflecting on whether one should undertake the action that expectations call for in the first place, as a theoretical/practical concern (Raffel 1994, 1999, 2006).…”