The advantage is HOSPITALITY.

A while back, a passer-by came in, frozen stiff. Chilled, iced, stiff, immobile, exhausted-it is the snake stretched out on the snow one winter's day. It asked for nothing; it was hibernating perhaps. A villager walking by, on his own land (note this well), gathers up the snake, brings it inside, stretches it out by the fire, where it immediately begins to awaken. From the outside to the inside, from numbness to life , from sleep to anger, from indifference to hatred: from cold to hot. The passer-by asked for a haven, a bed and some food, soup, victuals-to sleep under the same roof. Asked for but did not negotiate; it is not a question of price: the satyr's hospitality is free. Thenceforth the risk is there, quite literally; one is at the other's mercy. On the contrary, in the villager's house, another country rat. As his action is meritorious-charity, my good sir-it is a question of rent. Rent, that is to say, a price for a space, a payment for territory. The one who is at home is my lessee: this double locative is a veritable hornet's nest where regulated hospitality passes many a time to hostility. Having come back from the cold into the warmth, the insect attacks: ingrate, says the villager, such is my pay! But he figures wrong. The serpent is not a lessee; he was not looking for a haven; he was answered without having called. He was given an uncalled-for opinion. Someone made himself the serpent's benefactor, savior, and father. You are sleeping quite peacefully, and when you wake you find yourself in debt. You live with no other need, and suddenly, someone claims to have saved your country, protected your class, your interests, your family, and your table. And you have to pay him for that, vote for him, and other such grimaces. Thus the serpent awakens obliged to another. Something to get angry about. But, moreover, the villager was taking a walk at home, then goes into his house, still at home. As far as he is concerned, he never changed territories, never crossed a border. For himself, he is at home. On the contrary, the serpent does change. It was undoubtedly in its nest and finds itself in a foreign land. More than having been given a spot, his own has been taken away. Another debt. Thus when the balance sheet is drawn up, the demanded payment is turned around. And the host is less a host than he thought. Less hospitable than he thought. Undoubtedly hostile, that's the thorny part, the hot spot. Who has to pay? The litigation is serious. Who is the host and who is the guest? Where is the gift and where is the debt? Who is hospitable, who is hostile, again the same�ord, the same thing: * No third to judge in this case. It is true that elsewhere the third opens the oyster and eats it, devours the weasel and the rabbit, which surely means that he judges, that is to say; he decides, that is to say, he slices [tranche] . Like the esquire trenchant. We are drowning in words and in language. Host is subject, object, friend �e!!�_m.y':"'Decide then. Yes, immediately:To decidds to cut. The vlllager thus takes up his hatchet. Notice: he does not judge, does not decide; he slices in three [tranche] . Trancher, a medieval word, from trz'nz'care, from the Vulgar Latin for "to cut in three. " Thus: he takes his hatchet , slices the animal in three, making three serpents from two blows, a trunk, a tail, and a head. Perrin Dandin slices the pilgrims' oyster correctly: crunches it and gives a shell to each. The arithmetic works out right: he takes the booty and sends the other two on their way, each with a worthless shell. Can this calculation be generalized? Which is the third part? Or who or what is the third, in this logic of the trenchant decision? Is the third excluded or not? Here we have a trio valent logic where we expected only a bivalent one. t The same at the head, the other at the tail, or being at the head and nonbeing at the tail, and this middle trunk that is both same and other, being and nonbeing, and so forth. I think, however, that it can be decided. Here, La Fontaine, fol. lowing Phaedrus or Aesop, writes from the peasant's point of view. Death to ingrates. At least we understand here that gratitude, in the hard logic of exchange, bears the risk of life or death. I have just written "'You can understand why the great hunter, face to face with the Eternal One, Saint Julian, becomes the Hospitaller. I shall speak of these curious hunts. t"All of you who say that hot and cold or any two such principles are All, what is it that you attribute to both of them when you say that both and each are? What are we to understand by this 'are'? Is this a third principle besides those two others, and shall we suppose that the All is three, and not two any longer?" (Plato , The Soph ist, 243D-E). 24 The Parasite from the other point of view, that of the serpent. Which of the two is the ingrate, I ask you? Who among you allows himself to be displaced, carried from his home territory, permits himself to be the passive object of another's whim, that of the first passer-by? Who would thank, moreover, the one who decides for you? That would be the same as giving recognition to professional politicians. To those who see and consider others as if they were rocks, cold stones. To those who force others to be only objects, which can then be carried. To those who are astonished when the passive object suddenly wakes up and lashes out in anger. The one who did not lash out against his benefactors, saviors, and fathers would be forgetting all his duties, as would he who did not pass from cold passivity to the heat of battle. Ready to die. Sliced in three. I was saying that it could be decided. Look for a third before reaching for the hatchet. Strike but listen first. Let's try the ingrates, says the snake in the bag. My life is in your hands, the snake says to the man ; cut me up but be aware that you are the ingrate. We'll go to the cow; let her be the judge. She says: I give my milk and my children to man and he has never given me anything but death. The steer, a new third party who will judge, says that he works and is beaten in return and that his life is ended with a sacrifice on the altar of the gods. All of them give to man, then, who never gives anything in return. But let us descend to the level of the tree. It gives shelter, decoration, flowers, fruits, and shade. And in return for its wages or more accurately for its rent-for it shelters and produces a territory-it is felled. The tree judges ' man to be an ingrate. Man milks the cow, makes the steer work, makes a roof from the tree; they have all decided who the parasite is. It is man. Everything is born for him, animals and beings. In the moral, La Fontaine is euhermerist, sociologist, or politician enough to please his reader. The great and powerful, he says, act this way. Yes, of course, but the others? The farmer of the cow, the carpenter of the roof, and the priest who kills the steer are not great people. History says so without symbols, without translations or displacements. But history hides the fact that man is the universal parasite, that everything and everyone around him is a hospitable space. Plants and animals are always his hosts; man is always necessarily their guest. Always taking, never giving. He bends the logic of exchange and of giving in his favor when he is dealing with nature as a whole. When he is dealing with his kind, he continues to do so; he wants to be the parasite of man as well. And his kind want to be so too. Hence rivalry. Hence the sudden, explosive perception of animal humanity, hence the world of animals of the fables. If my kind were cattle, calves, pigs, and poultry, I could quietly maintain with them the same relations I have with nature. Such is the peaceful dream of my contemporaries, descendants, and ancestors. Always talking, never giving, staying in a good position in irreversible logic. The louse is a man for the wolf. M,hor!, move aroun��!!J..�tamQ���.:. The Lion's Share The Simple Arrow You remember the relation of order and of him who plays to the hilt in the position of the king. * The one who occupies this site receives everything and gives nothing in exchange. This defines a space where a wild den is at the extreme limit. If I were a fox, I would tell you why: I would see how to get in but not how to get out. All flows are oriented to the aforementioned position, and none come from it. All the footprints point toward the lion's den, but none come away. A rigorous diagram of a space structured by the relation of order, bearing a maximized point. Oddly enough, here, it is the spot of power, of absolute power, that of the lion, the king's place. But it is also a trap, an open maw. He who is well-placed has the right to eat the others. It is always a question of a meal, of visitors, and of guests. What does the lion give in exchange for his good? Nothing? Not entirely. An edict, a document, a passport, words and writing. He pays for his meal in well-turned, well-written phrases. And thus he is in the position of a parasite, a universal parasite. One day we will have to understand why the strongest is the parasite� that is to say, the weakest�why the one whose only function is to eat is the one who commands. And speaks. We have just found the place of politics. Why? Invert the described space and you will see the king grown old. He does not receive visits and game but is kicked, bitten, butted. He is excluded and sacrificed. He dies twice from the donkey's kick. The maximized point suddenly is minimized. The host/guest is universal, eater of all and eaten by all. *"Le J eu du loup," in Hermes I V. La distribution, pp. 89-104. 26 Logics 27 The rats, the country- and the city-dweller, have shown us that the system of parasites in stepladder formation is not very different ( from an ordinary system. Who will ever know if parasitism is an obstacle to its proper functioning or if it is its very dynamics? Daily, general patterns of behavior depend on the answer to this question. If we eliminate these tie-ups, would a system still remain? Is the system a set of constraints on our attempts at optimization, or do these latter, quite simply, produce the system itself? The question is asked globally here. In the case of the lion, it is asked locally. The space is full of relations of order. All lines go in one direction, none in the other. They literally go to one opening: the gaping maw of the universal parasite. Or to a common misery: the broken back of the universal victim. Questions: is the king victim or parasite, is the parasite king or victim? It is l the same question, not asked of the whole network, but at a local division, a single point of the system, undoubtedly at its extremum. It is the same question as that of the host/guest. But here we already have an idea (a rare one) of what might be a point of decision: the den where the game is eaten ravenously and where, one day, someone else risks being cut up. The space is strewn with simple arrows, pointing in only one direction.