ABSTRACT
This chapter is about Michel Serres, one of the most important French philosophers of the last century. Serres is a special guide for understanding the modern world as Trickster Land. Growing up during and after WWII, he gained first-hand experience about the increasingly unreal realities of modernity. These experiences stayed with him, and understanding the profound reasons why history repeatedly took such turns became a central concern animating his life-work. He recognised in supposedly sacrosanct features of intellectual life, like the call for ‘debates’ and the pervasiveness of critique the same principles that animate warfare, thus keeping himself outside. Even further, he had a set of personality features that together enabled him pursuing, for a very long time, a unique quest. He was extremely perceptive, noticing developments the moment they appeared, thus was among the first to recognise the information ‘revolution’, just as climate change. He also had absolute independence of spirit: he persisted with his interests, supremely oblivious not only to intellectual fashions, but also to dominant schools, being consistently hostile to mainstream rationalism, Marxism and psychoanalysis. The chapter, after presenting the key essays of his Hermes series, will focus on his most important book, The Parasite.
