Symbiosis/Introduction
Introduction: symbiosis as a living evolving critique.
Different species, interacting in a symbiotic fashion, living together over a prolonged period of time or even coevolving into new species: this vision on symbiosis has created a strong image, Both as a metaphor and a material reality, of species cooperating in the light of difference, of becoming something else and transgressing boundaries. This image has made the concept of symbiosis, in its many guises, a breeding ground for amongst others a biologically, posthuman and ecologically informed critique.
This living book consists of examples of how symbiosis has been deployed for instance as a critique against the mainstream Darwinian idea of evolution as struggle, against an anthropocentric worldview within the sciences and society at large, and against the idea of organisms or objects as static and isolated entities. Symbiotic processes offer seeds for alternative worldviews and as a tool of critique research on symbiosis has been taken-up as evidence for becoming as an infinite creative process, for the animal, microbal, machinic, and virtual other as an integral part of the multiple I. And for the integrated cooperation of living and non living affects.