The Hospitable Parasite: Parasitic Networks in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy

This article reads Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (2014) through the perspective of the parasite. By analyzing two characters’ responses to parasitic invasion by an alien life form, this article explores the ethical and affective charge of living through the consequences of blurred boundaries between human and nonhuman, earth and extraterrestrial, life and nonlife, self and other. While parasites are generally considered with fear and revulsion, the trilogy’s engagement with parasitic networks as a fact of ecological entanglement rather than as an exceptional occurrence significantly contributes to rethinking responses to infection and contamination beyond invasion and defense.