Help! I'm Turning into a Tapeworm (Don't Tell Me Not to Worry)

Teresa Zgoda: Taenia solium (tapeworm) everted scolex

Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

The above image by Teresa Zgoda, revealing the anterior end of a pork tapeworm, is truly the stuff of nightmares. No wonder then that after coming across it, a friend of mine experienced a metamorphic dream in which he had the head and short neck of the creature atop his still human body. 

 

As he described what had happened to him in his dream, it became clear that there was no point my telling him not to worry, as, clearly, he was profoundly disturbed by this - and perhaps rightly so; for if transforming into a macroparasite isn't troubling, then what is?

 

Besides, don't worry is such a crass response; insensitive and inadequate; dismissive and minimising. When people are upset, they want to be able to express their worries and fears and they want, perhaps, to be offered some explanation for why they are feeling as they do. 

 

They certainly don't want to hear the words don't worry, never mind, or calm down. Nor do they want to be told to get over it, as if their emotional distress were something trivial and slightly embarrassing (something they either have to justify or apologise for).          

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, what do you say to a man who is worried about becoming-tapeworm? Who has seen himself (in his dreams) with that terrifying attachment organ, the scolex, where his head should be and fears his body is becoming whiter and flatter and more ribbon-like by the day?     

 

I'm not a psychiatrist, or dream therapist, and I'm afraid my only experience in these matters is as a reader of fiction ... 

 

One thinks of Gregor Samsa, for example, who famously wakes up one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a large insect (commonly depicted as a cockroach). Initially assuming this to be a temporary change and that he will soon be back to normal, Gregor is, at first, philosophical about what has happened to him. Unfortunately, however, he doesn't recover his human form and things end tragically for him [1]. 

 

One also thinks of Marda West, in Daphne du Maurier's extraordinary short story 'The Blue Lenses' (1959), in which everyone appears to suddenly lose their human features and is seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality. Again, this might sound amusing at first, but any comic aspects quickly give way to horror [2].      

 

I would advise my friend, therefore, to take his dream seriously. But I would also remind him that our humanity is nothing originary and autonomous; in fact, there are no free-living organisms - we are all parasites living off the lives of others ...

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring, of course, to Franz Kafka's novella, Die Verwandlung (1915). There are many English editions of this text available, but I would recommend the translation by Susan Bernofsky, that comes with an introduction by David Cronenberg; The Metamorphosis (W. W. Norton and Co., 2014).

      For my analysis of the case of Gregor Samsa, see the first of my becoming-insect posts: click here.

 

[2] See Daphne du Maurier, 'The Blue Lenses', in The Breaking Point, (Virago Press, 2009), pp. 44-82. For my reading of this tale, click here. 

 

 

This post is for my friend Síomón Solomon.

 

  

Becoming-Insect 1: The Case of Gregor Samsa

There's more than a grain of truth in the following statement by Richard Mabey:

"I think we may be lucky that insects are too small and remote ever to have entered our understanding in the way that birds and flowers have. If we saw their lives for what they really are I think it might be too much for us to bear."

And yet, sometimes, one can't help looking at the bees, bugs and beetles with a mixture of admiration and envy and thoughts of becoming-insect; i.e., of entering an alien life free from all compassion and compromise, but with its own inhuman beauty. Not that this ever ends well, as the cases of Gregor Samsa and Seth Brundle demonstrate ...


1: The Case of Gregor Samsa

One might argue that Gregor Samsa doesn't in fact become-insect in the very special sense that Deleuze and Guattari mean by the term. For his is primarily a change at the molar level of form - a metamorphosis - whereas becoming-animal is a demonic event played out at the molecular level of forces that enables one to: "stake out the path of escape in all its positivity ... to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone ..."

However, as Deleuze and Guattari refer in their own work to this case as an example of becoming-animal - albeit one that fails due to Gregor's refusal to take his deterritorialization all the way - I'm not going to press the issue here. Let's just agree that Kafka's tale doesn't simply concern an imaginary identification with an insect taking place in Gregor's mind; it's neither a mad fantasy, nor a terrible dream.

His, rather, is an essential transformation of the kind that troubles Freudians and theologians alike and one misses the point of the story if one fails to appreciate this. The six-legged critter that Gregor becomes isn't archetypal nor mythological; nor is it in need of any dreary psychoanalytic interpretation (it doesn't merely signify oedipal anxiety, for example).

On the other hand, as Walter Benjamin points out, neither is it particularly rewarding to read the story too naturalistically and become obsessed with classifying what kind of animal Gregor becomes. English translations sometimes indicate a giant cockroach, but the German terms used by Kafka - ungeheuer Ungeziefer - are non-specific and suggestive of many types of unclean animal or vermin, not just those that belong to the class of creatures we usually think of as the worst sort of creepy-crawly.         

It's doubtless because he wanted to keep things vague that Kafka also prohibited illustrations for his book. In a letter to his publisher he insisted that images of Gregor post-transformation were not to be included, even if depicted from a distance or in shadow. But it's clear from his own descriptions that Gregor was some kind of large insect scuttling about and Kafka uses the terms Insekt and Wanze [bug] in his correspondence when discussing the story.  

Interestingly - and I think rather amusingly - despite Kafka's wish for indeterminacy and Benjamin's dismissal of readings that attempt to root themselves in taxonomy, Nabokov - who was not only a great novelist, but also a great entomologist - claimed he knew exactly what species of insect Gregor turned into; basically, a big beetle just over 3 feet long.

What's more, in his heavily annotated copy of Kafka's novella that he used for teaching purposes, Nabokov even provided an illustration: 

Whatever type of pest he became, sadly, Gregor the Mensch-Insekt, is allowed and encouraged to die a lonely, sordid death by his family, raising the question of where true horror and monstrosity begins.


Notes

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan, (University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

Josh Jones, 'Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway', essay on openculture.com (Oct 21 2015): to read, click here.
 
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Michael Hofmann, (Penguin Books, 2007)  
 
Richard Mabey, The Unofficial Countryside, (Collins, 1973). 

Readers interested in a related post to this one, which also refers to the case of Gregor Samsa, should click here. 

To read part two of this post on becoming-insect: the case of Seth Brundle, click here.  

Vermin (With Reference to the Case of Gregor Samsa)

 Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, 

fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

The word vermin is an ugly term for an ugly phenomenon; a qualitative noun that doesn't innocently describe a type of unclean animal or a class of sub-human subject, but identifies, classifies, and characterizes as such. 

A morally pernicious term that is effectively a mortal judgement passed; a death sentence. For to designate as vermin is to make fit for extermination. 

It includes wild birds and beasts that are thought to carry disease or in some other way endanger or threaten to disrupt human enterprise with their destructive activities; pesky insects and parasites that swarm and infest; and, lastly, people perceived as dirty, despicable, and problematic (Jews, gypsies, immigrants, the homeless, the unemployed, and the poor in general). 

Thus, if when applied to animals the term betrays mankind's innate sense of supremacy or speciesism, when applied to our fellow men and women it manifests our murderous racism and xenophobia. 

The Nazis, of course, had a particular penchant for portraying their opponents and those they feared and despised as Ungeziefer and Untermenschen - i.e. not worthy of sacrifice or society; Lebensunwertes Leben. 

And so vermin is a word that makes me particularly uncomfortable; one that I would never use and do not like to hear used. It reminds me at last of poor Gregor Samsa; what happened to him might happen to any of us, so there's surely a lesson to be learned here.