What is Work?

Michel Serres, Talmud, and Life-Work

“I no longer see a difference between the bee and the architect.”—Michael Serres

Michel Serres says that “work is the struggle against noise.” (In French, the word is parasite.)

To work is to remove the static that obscures the message; the interruptions that detract from the meal. To work is to sort the useful out from the useless.

In Serres’s expansive d…