Nanotexts

Nanotexts addresses the trope of writing and thinking the small. It begins its focus by looking at the genealogy of nanotechnology that is commonly believed to start with Richard Feynman's 1960 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," where he explores the technological means of writing small. Although the field remains unnamed in his talk, from that point Feynman's name becomes forever linked to nanotechnology. What happens in the scientific practice of nanotechnology of a field is that the emphasis becomes more on the generation of small machinery and less on writing small.

Nanotexts examines how narrative technologies from novels, films and multimedia figure the small. The works examined have in common moments where the logic of representation meets a threshold beyond which it becomes exhausted. By pursuing and closely reading these instances, the project concerns itself with how the figuring of the small destabilizes the forces of literature and results in inexpressible and inaccessible locations that point at the potentiality of narrative media.

Exploring these texts and how they write the small reveals various strategies that have developed alongside media technology. The book suggests that these strategies present a potential path for using media to write the small in ways that turn technology towards an ethical life. It is by looking to the small and how when the small recovers the powers of humility in the face of the Other and when faced with technology that media can be used to generate shifts in our lifeworld.