Melancholy objects

if stones were Lacanian

Timothy Morton

pp. 193-209

in: Svitlana Matviyenko, Judith Roof (eds), Lacan and the posthuman, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

I keep up with research on schizophrenia because my brother Steve has it. (Hence, reading Deleuze and Guattari is always a little strange for me, shall we say.) One hypothesis is that a neurotoxin released by toxoplasmosis gives rise to symptoms of schizophrenia and possibly Alzheimer's. Toxoplasmosis is caused by Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan symbiont that lives in most people's brains harmlessly. Cats are common hosts, and cat poop contains a lot of the protozoans. One theory is that cat poop near to pregnant humans is a way for the symbiont to jump. One in five of us humans carry the symbiont.

Cited authors

Deleuze Gilles