Milburn - NanoSplatter Disintegrating The Postbiological Body PDF

Nano/Splatter: Disintegrating the Postbiological Body Author(s): Colin Milburn Source: New Literary History, Vol. 36, No.
2, Essays Probing the Boundaries of the Human in Science (Spring, 2005), pp. 283-311 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057893 . Accessed: 28/10/2013 01:15
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Nano/Splatter: Disintegrating Postbiological Body

Colin Milburn
This much
the
at stake, but
we know; that it isn't simply our lives that supports them. the very biology Bloom ?Wil (1998) McCarthy,
Let
the bodies
hit
the floor. Pool, "Bodies" (2001)
?Drowning
Nanobiology
At
and the Machinic
Phylum
in the future for
of biotechnology the intersection and nanotechnology, we frontier of find the future. The hybrid "nanobiology,"
of technoscience and socioeconomic development,
certainly?
the administration
one, sees nanobiology
of the U.S. National

as an essential
Nanotechnology
route for advancing
Initiative,
nanoscience
even the future of "life" itself and its attendant industrial potentials?but as living in the nanotech counts and what era.1 For through the not of does the horizon material of the only perspective nanobiology,
shift from organism about "nanobacteria" the and microscale "minimalist to the nanoscale for (recent example, claims instanti organisms,"
to remain fixed in the domain defined by of theorist Charles prevailing conceptions "biology."2 As nanotechnology at Ostman definition of life itself may be perched suggests: "[T]he very inmedicine?nanobiology. the edge of the next great revolution What is now are technologies and applications in the arenas of emerging
biomolecular 'components' integrated into microscale systems, . . .
ate this shift), but
life ceases
synthetically engineered related pseudoproteins,

organelle of what component is commonly
components, quasi-viral biomolecular prosthetics,

'entities' . . . to as [that] 'life.'"3 will
modified and
the
DNA
and
biomolecular
very essence
redefine
referred
New Literary History, 2005, 36: 283-311
284
With envisions writing
primary reshape
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
for "life itself," Ostman repeated emphasis on the consequences an inevitable global transformation in the wake of nanobiology, is already unfolding that the '"history of the future' and the
elements the of economies this evolutionary of the world, eventstream and perhaps that are even poised the to very
of life itself, are currently at hand."4 This collapse of science fictional into the technological of rhetori speculation present?typical cal efforts to legitimate nanoscience and bring molecular nanotechnology more into being5?is than hype, for Ostman's discovery of the "already to future at the site of nanobiology works performatively unfolding" "biomolecular relocate life elsewhere, compo beyond biology. The definition
nents" of engineered microsystems already become present examples of
the "redefinition
sufferance,
of life" yet to come:

"entities"
they
are postbiological
prematurely from
creatures
the "evolu
in
provisional
displaced
The imagination of nanobiology tionary eventstream." regularly fabri cates autonomous traditional agency outside life-bearing topographies of organismics, by cytology, and genetics; biology as such is transformed arena of nanobiology, in which the molecular the "newly emerging
components structed of to create living viral-like organisms entities" can and be 'disassembled' 'systems' and which recon . . . "biom?dical
mimic
behavioral
the physiology
characteristics."6
of
living
In
organisms
this "arena,"
in their
vital signs of
operational
migrate
and
beyond
biological
and literary
space via a narratival

texts?that involves a
procedure?informing
promise, a vision
both
organelle
scientific
compo
nents
of cytoplasmic liberated from the biological systems organism, to self membranes and enabled from thereupon spilled phospholipid It is a narrative of opening bodies through nano technological actualize.
and reabsorbing subcellular molecularities into the epistemic
processes
domain
the domain of nanobiology, The molecular "entity" materializes

systems of technoscience
of their "becoming-entity." as an object of knowledge

within a narrative discourse
for the
of
experimental
to nanobiology. This narrativity?which immanent corporeal I will call the "scene of disintegration"? takes place within what des of the body and simultaneously the components deterritorializes of the living cell towards a future where tines the molecular machines is therefore "life itself has been "reshaped." The scene of disintegration makes the nanoscale it and both symbolically speculative: specular violence
accessible by "disassembling" organisms and translating molecules into
so it also visualizes the but in doing technoscientific representations, of the molecular the reverse-transcribes of future" and destiny "history into the present.7 As Ostman entities suggests, the radical reshaping of
life in the nomenon nanobiological has which future already become is "an emergent, transformative phe manifest."8
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
285
a narrative a form both of represents experimentation, Disintegration in of their of advance way imagining nanobiological operations perfor a rhetorical even are mance when simulation that and out, plays they some as their or to what technical Similar script protocol. performed, nanoscientists call "exploratory disintegration engineering,"9 exempli
fies what Nicolas Pethes calls the "exploring" program establishing common for "both scientific and literary modes of experiment praxis Pethes suggests that the ing: exploring possible " forms of knowledge."10 as those of "fictive experiment such literature, [s] popular staged in the are to able "test nonexistent of medical thriller, ways knowing and their
effects the in the extension and of a narrative, suppositions insofar an as the narrative provides requires." I temporalization causal experiment
would
both ent
extend
nanoscience
nanobiology,
ways of
to the fictive this argument that the narratives suggesting

and nanofiction but also to work produce not
of speculative experiments of disintegration informing

only them, to "nonexist explore to make them exist. In
knowing,"
of nanobiological Iwill argue that tracing the operations disintegration, its narratival effects work even now to create the conditions of possibility for the molecular of the body to be released into the world as machines
self-reproducing ments of nanobiology autonomous engineer agents. the In other epistemic words, space the needed fictive experi to accom
modate
autonomous out one
molecular by
or
Defined
forms of "postbiological theorist Stuart complexity

is a self-reproducing work of thermodynamic definition "proper
life." Kauffman,
system and, as
the
"molecular
able such, to carry would John
agent more a new
molecular cycles," life itself."11
constitute
Accordingly,
the kind of molecular agent Shirley's novel Crawlers (2003) describes as "nanotech fabricated life."12 Wil McCarthy's Bloom by nanobiology as life," and, while certainly not biological, (1998) calls it "technogenic far as "life" goes, "TGL [technogenic life] is the real thing; it eats, sorts,
metabolizes, reproduces."13 This "real thing" imagined by science and
science fiction
the experimental
is already anticipated
laboratory: for
within
the representational
the belated
space of
arrival
some
nanoscientists,
a process of technogenic in the future would merely entities complete theoretical of activated the machinations the already by nanobiology, of "life itself in light of the subcellular redefinition released agencies to become from biology "[m]olecular self-assembling subcomponents . . . [will] become as entities, which organizing self-modifying organelle and flourish on the physical terraform."14 ubiquitous, related scientific fields like artificial life, evolutionary Traversing fields working evolution?those theo robotics, and prebiotic molecular or to evolve like life "from the experimentally retically something
bottom up"15?nanobiology presupposes an evolutionary trajectory of
286
technogenic
future Researcher where
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
life stretched
biomorphs Steen Rasmussen
from
must
the prebiotic
learn and his to
into the postbiotic,

with have technomorphs. written
into a
that
coexist colleagues
nanobiology
as self-repairing
will
"eventually
and
produce
dramatic
nano-machines.
new
technologies,
With metabolisms
such
self-replicating
and genetics unlike those of existing organisms, would such machines literally form the basis of a living technology possessing powerful Into capabilities and raising important social and ethical implications."16 this nanobiological future, as yet unarmed with an adequate posthuman
ethics of to accommodate "machinic life," we these are new "living encouraged technologies," to proceed these with new forms "cautious
courage."17
But this is a future and already. Seeman and Bernard

for the to a nascence of
that does not wait for the future?it
Recent
by nanobiologists experiments Yurke, using DNA as a self-assembling

structures robotic dream functions" ... and molecular at that the can
happens now, such as Nadrian engineering

suggest and point "It is still motors,
material
three-dimensional "elaborate
nanoscale replicate":
"nanotechnological
machine
a far cry from

the time
the replication that do
achieved
centenary
by every
comes
living organism,
we should
but by
have
the Watson-Crick
around,
DNA-based
chines, entirely, organism," contain
machines
from
as well."18
Such
automorphic
the well to realm as
DNA ma
of every biology living systems, that are
extracted
self-organizing but embodying in themselves: the future
contexts and cytoplasmic and "as self-replicating a machinic alternative "Human-made
biotic
nanomachines
powered by materials be long before more

into the service and of living-nano
taken from living cells are a reality today. It won't and more of the cells' working parts are drafted
human-made nano nanomachines. becomes more As common, the merging idea the of of
non-living
self-replicating nanomachines dream.'"19 For nanoscientists dreams

exclusive
seems
and
dream
of
machines
Robert have
from waking to create

replication
life: "Self-replication
living systems.
less like a 'futurist's day Freitas and Ralph Merkle, these almost become indistinguishable is a hallmark, though no longer the less and
. . .The technology presently exists
province,
artificial
comes
self-replicating
the potential
hardware
for evolution
entities."20
. . . the
And
with
self
of
evolution
machinic
life beyond the biological world.21 these Through signs of things to come, the nanomachines providential as of the body are already released into the promise of the future?not a one. a technological The of but semiotic natural event, biotechnology life the cell has been prefabricated as an embryonic stage of technogenic of deterritorialization awaiting only nanobiology, by the speculative gaze to be sent on its way to becoming-entity. As Gilles (or disintegration)
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
287
Deleuze and F?lix Guattari have written, "only something de territorialized to which it is is capable of reproducing itself'22?that is, the degree measures to from its ability deterritorialized independently self-replicate
the production or at enveloping maintenance the moment cellular of aggregates?and the escapes formal higher-level autonomous that the to become structures molecularity self-assembling, or
organism
self-replicating,
life has come
and
to a close.
self-organizing,
The newly
biology's
born
historical
no
monopoly
longer
on
needs
nanomachine
the support "genetic

homeostatic
of biology: its does to coordinate program"

or autopoietic system
not and
need
a "master molecule" or a control it;23 it does not need a

it;24 it does not need any
to preserve
at all. of biologism of what Richard We see in nanobiology, then, a resonant coordinate life from the has the where called era, "postvital" Doyle disappears and dissolves into molecular informational closed interior of organisms crutch
feedback codes, processes, as the absent of origin systems, those very and programs, but returns, undead, molecular scientific practices?from
to artificial life?effecting its dislocation.25 It is not biology to genomics so much that biology has been destroyed by these postvital sciences, but rather that the biological now manifests itself "beyond living," a sublima to technologies of information. For tion of life in excess of its reduction return this of the info its Thacker, Eugene postvital biological beyond mechanical reduction is an effect of "biomedia," the "technical
recontextualization of biological components and processes"?exempli
fied which
in fields
like bioinformatics,
ultimately
systems
"returns to
biology,
the
biocomputing,
in a spiral,
and
in
nanomedicine?that
biological
the biological optimized, impelled

itself."26 As we will
. . . but in which is not effaced the biological is a biology to rematerialize, to realize, beyond
see, disintegration's multiple remediations of the
within the "biological," its serial enframing of the "technological" machine both within and without the body, effectively projects machinic life as the biology beyond the afterlife of life. Or to put it biology, another way, disintegration unleashes the machinic phylum. as Deleuze is The machinic and Guattari have written, phylum,
"matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of
traits of expression" The machinic (7P409). singularities phylum all the self-organizing nature. in describes It materializes in processes the spontaneous of elements of assemblage cooperating populations
(atoms, accelerations, molecules, cells, sedimentations, organisms) and Nanoscientist and operates as of Lehn intensifications, the has flows written of destratifications Jean-Marie
and
matter-energy-information.
of
the machinic
organized,
to condensed "From divided and on phylum: an is and toward the path increase living, thinking matter,
to in
288
complexity through self-organization. . . .
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
Self-organization
is the
driving
force
matter."27
that led up to the evolution

Traversing the organic,
of the biological
mineral, and social
world
worlds,
from
inanimate of
the machinic
phylum
life, the
therefore
recognition
gives
of
rise to a new
"nonorganic
conceptuality
life proper
to the meaning
to matter,
life"?"a
a vital
as such, a material the creative vitalism" (TP 411)?in of the physical world.28 Tracing evolutions of the machinic expressions chemical, cultural, phylum across biological, linguistic, and geological state of matter
history, Manuel De undergoing Landa writes: phase "In a very transitions of real sense, matter-energy various reality kinds. is a single . . . Rocks
and wind,
dynamic energy
germs
and words,
are all different

ways
manifestations
this single
of
matter
this
material expresses
reality itself."29
. . . different
in which
This
expressivity
of the machinic of the molecular
ing performance itself suggests to nanoscientists

being, proach assembly for to "[s] elf-organization nanoscience and . . . [which] is
the self-organiz phylum?especially machines inside the body?in already into the way to bring the nanofuture
. . . provide and an original "molecular to offer ap self one
processes nanotechnology,"30 important
centrally
in
life
. . . seems
of
the
most
nanostructures."31
nanoscience nanotechnology must matter"32
general But
"offers" can be be seriously
strategies if the machinic

its considered questioned. a services,
now
available phylum
then the
for thus
absolute extent
generating for
of that to which
"provides"
control ventures
and
the B.
"total, C.
Crandall
nanotechnology
species' "absolute for matter control control."33
is "simply a descriptive
of materiality," Yet having step provided
term for a particular

in our both species-destining anticipation may
state of our
towards and means be
to become
self-capacitating,
nanotechnology
actually
in the process entirely. machinic Already
of demolishing reliant on
phylum for many to and speak for, what Bruno Latour has called the begins acknowledge, in its own laboratory environment.34 It opens to "Parliament of Things" names the "dance of human between what Andrew agency" Pickering
and nonhuman entities in the "posthumanist space" of technoscience.35
the anthropocentric concept of control of the the self-organizing performativity of its assembly techniques, nanotechnology
And
if this dance of nanotechnological in contemporary evident laboratory a "living future in which imaginable
from within our own bodies.36
is already becoming agency a mere trace of the it is life, has been liberated technology"
novels the scientific accounts of nanobiology and the nanotech While in the that I analyze in this essay differ in many respects, they coincide common practice of staging and restaging disintegration, of fabricating the molecular the performative space for sending, posting, destining
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
289
components
narrational ethics of
of the biological
movement, human-technology I argue,
body
into the postbiological

the laying that eschews foundations power
future. This
for disparities an
begins relations
between
and postvital multiplicities, molarities and wholes biological bodies and machines. For within the future of self parts, nanoscopic thinkable by nanobiology, the human ("our capacitating matter made construct of territorialization?stripped of its species") as a metaphysical
species-destining towards mastery?dissolves into a posthuman network
of distributed
agencies
dynamic partnership places the liberal humanist

control software, nature."37 hardware, In this and
where, between
as N.
Katherine
Hayles
humans and subject's manifest

we find generating
intelligent destiny
said, "a re machines and

life
has
to dominate
network wetware,
technogenic traversing new machinic-semiotic
the privileged flows that consume spot of the biologistic With the promise of postvital molecularities embedded
experiments of nanobiology, era the era marked by the
human subject. in the narratival

reflexive construc
tion of the "human" and biological

the across coming striations nanotech of explodes, the machinic
"life" vaporizes
bursts, phylum.38 spreads, In a word,
into history
and life
as life in
disseminates "splatters."
The
"Splatter," in the
Scene
of Disintegration
of literary and cinematic horror, has
vocabulary
come
violently
to refer to a representational
torn asunder, shredded,
moment
sliced,
in which
the human
body
melted,
is
hacked,
dismembered,
as semiotic and transformed, fluid into ghastly forms of splattered monstrous As the motif of "splatterpunk" fiction? abjection. defining wettest auteurs the of such as Clive Barker, represented by productions Z. Edward Lucio Fulci, Brite, Lee, Romero, Poppy John Shirley, George David Cronenberg, and Peter Jackson?splatter is the figurai mecha
nism through which narratives of "extreme horror" create meaning: in
is the message."39 texts, "mutilation and the social codes adhering boundaries unsettles the economies of corporealization, that at the moment of splatter, the
deconstruction/transformation of the
these
viciously and Jay McRoy has argued and graphic "spectacular

form" enacts a radical
By disrupting to them, splatter
the body's
'human'
embodiment, suggesting possibilities other than those encountered in the historical accident of experience as human morphology.40 has Halberstam the bodies Or, written, Judith at the gory conclusion that "emerge triumphant of a splatter film are the limits of the human body and they literally posthuman, they punish
mark identities as always stitched, sutured, bloody at the seams, and
revision
of normative
of somatic
290
completely
ism."41 The fictional nanotechnology narrative, or
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
beyond
the limits and
the reaches
of an impotent
"nanofiction,"
human
frequently
this horror-image of splatter, this primal scene in which the appropriates as a means to coherence of the human body is irrevocably fragmented, the and inhuman that nanoscience is starkly vivify tangible impact
beginning already to have on our lives.42 At one level, scenes where
nanomachines
grotesque perpetuate against the flesh simply the threat of advertise possible dangers of nanotechnology?especially and the horrors of "global ecophagy."43 But I "gray goo" apocalyptic
to examine the the scene of disintegration?as "experimental" splatter narrative in nanofiction?the procedure whereby scene mo of
violence
want
as become detached from biology and fabricated scene as a I of life. will also the present disintegration postbiological on to ideals based hierarchical of body integration speculative challenge of the automorphic instead an account component parts, offering lecular agencies
organism as a self-organizing collective of "interdependent but indepen
dent" molecularities criteria

existence.44
of
(as Crawlers puts it), life beyond and across biology Marlow's
it
the thereby redistributing other forms of machinic nanoscientist

of breaking government
In John
develops and an
Robert
advanced
Nano
(2004),
John
down
Marrek
matter agents,
restructuring
nanotechnology into form. any
capable But corrupt
recognizing
every level of
the revolutionary
human
effects
this
technology
would
have
political?
on
existence?bodily,
cultural,
economic,
attempt
In the herds and of
to kill Marrek
extended nanobots the
so as to prevent
his Jennifer pursuers, Rayne
him from revealing

this and watches as novel, the the
his invention.
releases multiply
chase-sequences against reporter
comprising
Marrek nanobots
swarm,
grisly
consequences
with
What distant,
rapt fascination:
she men, saw was guns, substance. from before the beyond and vehicles ... As experience crawled of as any living covered things, horribly, and being. with including Twenty yards some unseen, the men?
colorless disappeared nothingness bone. The was
she watched, in. The men skin,
though all of these screamed then muscle
the outside her
eyes?first
her before cars, too, disintegrated failed she by the sight of it that she almost as well?and was covered the street spreading including hers.45
eyes. to notice rapidly
into the dissolving followed organs, by So horrified and enthralled that outward the surface crawling in all directions,
The
unprecedented,
sublime
spectacle
of
the
scene
of
disintegra
of any living being"?is both "horrifying" the experience tion?"beyond of the stability it violates human perceptions and "enthralling" because
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
291
is "riveted by the scene" of people it undermines the (TV108) because being "[tjaken of the the foundations of conceptual integrity body, exposing precarious human structure: "The screams of the terrified men filled the hall as the nanites entered their bodies their skin and calcium-eating through dissolved their bones from the inside. Bodies collapsed inward and lay on the floor like so many warm of flesh" (N 319). Nanofiction puddles extent even to the which the in its everydayness, is in hyperbolizes body,
a state of constant nanotechnological disintegration, systematically
of the macroscale
world; the viewer apart, atom by atom"
made
in nanobiology by the flows of what becomes, as the "molecular the of discourse, technology" organism; nanobiologist David S. Goodsell "Even structures that one might feel are writes,
permanent, such as bones, are continually disassembled, repaired, and
and
unmade
by the "bionanomachinery" always at work inside the body.46 And if nanomachines other material while disinte liquify assemblages do in nanofiction, it simply grating human bodies, as they frequently that the human demonstrates is just one possible of the fits formation and eruptions of the machinic "A nanite did not distinguish phylum: between materials and inert" (TV199) because living "any object on earth
can be torn apart into its constituent atoms, which can then be used to
rebuilt"
build
tions
else" something the debt Suggesting

of
(7V139). that the scene of disintegration

Marlow writes (N that 229), the nanites saws" miniature
owes
are
to conven
"molecular
horror-splatter, or sledgehammers,
chain
hardware-killers,
akin to the iconic Leatherface from Toby Hooper's Texas perhaps Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Like Leatherface?the dispossessed slaugh to reproduce mechanical as the terhouse worker disciplined violence invisible base of late capitalism, the deranged serial killer who eats his victims after demolishing them with chainsaw and sledgehammer?
nanites are also mindless recyclers of human parts, consuming across "all
human
material
flesh
flux:
in the building"
"The stricken
(jV204)
team leader
to reproduce
staggered
their own ravenous,

screaming the
as nanites disassembled the floor, right hand and face disappearing outer layers of his brain and enveloped his body," transforming him into as "each new nanite set about the task of nanoware each of employing
sixteen arms to rip apart its surroundings and construct new nanites" (N
199-200).
"nanocells,"
Similarly,
called
in Shirley's
"breakouts"
Crawlers, a population
or "crawlers" for their
of experimental
nomadic and
insidious nature, propagates itself within a small California town through the hostile of bodies: "the nanocells used the body's consumption
resources to make more and more of themselves, and took over
to what Mark therefore contributes (C325). completely" Seltzer has called the "splatter codes" of postindustrial machine culture:
Nanofiction
292
the systemic processes of consumption that
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
recycle
bodies
as
cybernetic
the absorptions and relocations of the flows of matter and information, into serial repetitions of addictive of constitutive violence body
postmodernity.47 Molecular cal is violence and the against human the body meat?the becomes baseline In the source of mechani ecology? "breakouts
reproduction, in remade
of machine Crawlers, the
nanomachine's
image.
and reorganized them," while "[o]thers were in for extraordinary reserved just... original) cyborg human tissue mechanical and electronic with experiments combining components, testing "new shapes and formats, looking for different models that worked," "new ways to think life and organizing it" (C274). The body in pieces, dispersed modes of produc among nanobiological climbed
tion, suggests other possible assemblages, other morphogenies: "[The
into some people parts" (C5, ellipsis
had stripped all the skin off Ahmed's skull, to be used in breakouts] some other project" Reassembled its fragments (C 5). differently, into puzzling inhuman projects, the body in-extremis becomes inserted a pastiche of recombined and recycled detritus mixed bricolage, by the
subcellular sampling artists of the nanofuture.
of bodies, serial disintegrations Through for autogenesis, entities find new possibilities
turing material themselves organization out of the charnel called wreckage, Nanobots "biology."
self-reproducing for tinkering

the scraps of from rising
molecular and restruc

an the obsolete gore: a
from below, from of machinic evolution figuration "bottom up," as nanodiscourse imagines it. Exemplified forms the of narratability of condition Bloom, biosplatter of the novel for the first opens with epoch, paragraph
of a man from the bottom up?a resonant symbol for
within, in Wil McCarthy's the "technogenic" the disintegration

the ascension
from
the
of
nanolife:
voracious dubbed entire
"[I]t started with

and unstoppable
the feet. These

population of and human
things usually
Earth to flee
do"
as well to
(B 1). A
as the
overspread "mycora"?has inner solar system, forcing
self-replicating consumed survivors
nanomachines?
the moons
of Jupiter for safety. But even in the cold reaches of space, stray mycora find their way into underground human habitats and begin to "bloom," structures bodies and material themselves by dissolving reproducing bloom of the the into "the rainbow mist, submicroscopic living dust, in their reach and converting it to more of still eating everything mycora a eve to the of themselves" the mission (B 2-3). On investigate "Mycosystem"?the
planets?a bloom
ecological
erupts and
collective
devours
of mycora
the mission
inhabiting
security
the inner
captain:
"[His] body did not come apart at once into threads and dust, but his frost before he'd even with mycoric skin had gone rainbow-crystalline hit the floor, and of course he never did rise" (B 56). Indiscriminately,
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
293
structures: "The air vent
the mycora
liquefy
organisms
and
nonorganic
and
turning
the wall
into
it was part of began

rainbow-threaded
to boil,
vapors as
their substance
the tiny, tiny
turning
mycora
fluid,
disas
sembled
During
them molecule
the scene of
by molecule"
disintegration,
(B 54-5).
organisms and air vents splatter,
and
the nanomachine the molecular life that
becomes
through form of
phylum,
the form of life that emerges precisely of wetware and hardware, the redistribution itself by desedimenting
fluid" temporary
reproduces
and "turning
the machinic
of mate
"vaporizing"
accretions
riality and bootstrapping

narrator, "nanolife" reporter through not
itself together
out of the resultant

the
goo. Blooms
of
observes Strasheim, John an electron micrograph: not but with
self-replication
Not
quite
machine, putting pieces
crablike, like a
quite
urchinlike,
copies too small
digger/constructor of itself together for the micrograph
quite smaller
in appearance. A tiny organic than the smallest bacterium, them typical up out piece of of
cool precision, building to capture. In short, a pretty
technogenic Reliquifying
life. (B 6) the material
flows that cut across biological and nonorganic enables endless reconstructive assemblages, disintegration possibilities com for "technogenic lebensforms" (B 95), and the mycora produce in multiple modes of organization: "[T] hey're a lot more plex behaviors than just [digesting machines]. Individually, they're complex and myste
rious They they enough. communicate receive In groups, back 139). their and Thus behaviors forth, change become state random even based more on intricate. information of the
. . ." (B
seemingly
structurations
Mycosystem?including
bodies?are really effects
formations
of molecular
that
look
suspiciously
working so the
like human
agents
in coordination,
as nanobiologist
generates random as these people
Renata
structures seem
Baucum
itself; to think. it's
suggests:
not You nearly know
"Maybe the Mycosystem

homogeneous term or 'emergent
times over, with decidedly repeated a million results. Our bodies aren't flesh, macroscopic lumps of undifferentiated and the Mycosystem is not a lump of undifferentiated (B 96). mycora" The nanobiologist the human analogically refigures body and the as same the of machinic Mycosystem inhabiting plane organization, behavior'? Small actions
both macroscopic emergent structures produced through "small actions
repeated molecular
a million
times The
over"
by
the differentiated and
behaviors
of
its formations, its agents. systemic "body" a its vital signs, represent level of complexity matched corporealizations, of its components, and life (the term entirely by the complexity or this level of complexity) describing applies regardless of integration disintegration:
294
"I think number rable a of to ours, [the mycora subunits and to any higher were are] alive,
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
the
I know in terms of the yes. they are, and between the is them, compa linkage complexity animal's. But for all that, they're in just components said. original)
larger system." "I always figured "Yeah. So
they is hemoglobin."
just
goop,"
[Strasheim] in
(B 184,
emphasis
molecular and splatter Comparing linkages to mammalian complexity stratum into that of the animal ing mycoric "goop" body occupied by tissues through communal alloca hemoglobin (connecting disparate tions of oxygen), Baucaum vision of "larger exposes her disintegrative
systems" as collectivities of molecular agents who are themselves "alive."
Which
is not to say that hemoglobin is thereby "enlivened," but as an to the but mycora, analogon "interdependent independent" hemoglo to stand for the molecularities bin is made of the biological realm destined towards the future as technogenic life once released from the
of the organism. Hemoglobin, then, is put into "becoming life" the of Bloom, which sees the evolutionary perspective technogenic by as an autonomous Mycosystem "entity" (B 227) constantly evolving its independently "It's a devious one, alongside evolving components: hierarchies
. .. Not sense. in a deliberate Imean in an Mycosystem. evolutionary new. It's the mycora Forms, behaviors, always trying something . . ." themselves of the evolution, (B 129). Postbiological heterogenesis molecular and molar takes of the disinte wholes, parts place by virtue that closed that volatil open up formerly systems, grations conceptually as blooms ize bodies of molecular entities. Nanofictions, cooperative with Deleuze and Guattari, these molecular entities along comprehend . . . as "formative own machines in their engaged operating by assembly, nonlocalizable intercommunications and localizations, dispersed bring that one.
of temporalization, formations, ing into play processes fragmented . . . and where the whole is itself produced detached parts alongside
parts, as a part apart."48 Nanosplatter thus marks not only an end
and the
to one
conception
proper and
of the body and

its maintenance
its hierarchization,
of the organism
but an end
as the
to biologism
teleomechanical
we know; that it isn't simply our lives at stake, but the very biology that supports them" (B 258). This anticipatory closure of biologism plays out inMichael Crichton's a covert scientific institution where Prey (2002), develops nanobiological horizon of life: "This much
agents?autogenic self-organized "mechanical "swarms."49 The organisms"?that swarms exhibit interact intelligent together behavior as and
even
predatory
tendencies,
"the swarms
reproducing
consume mammalian
themselves
tissue
through
in order to
biodisintegration:
reproduce"
(P 194). They
begin
hunting
their human
creators,
forcing
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
295
is and purposes, also self-sustaining, can innovate it's alive" supplement as he triggers
the learns solve 176).
scientists from
to conclude experience, . . Which . a new
that has
"the collective
swarm
reproduces,
intelligence, all the practical swarms
to (P and
problems. Not only
means form of
for life,
supplant
reconstituted narrator, electromagnet
the biological
at computer the
entirely. Bodies
cellular level Jack swarms: by Forman,
inhabited
mimetic discovers
by the swarms become

nanomachines, when the an
scientist to disable the
[Julia's] mouth face rigid with vibrating screamed. began And
as she screamed, was opened I held The tension. her hard. And her into then eyes rivulets, rush, her features
a skin seemed
continuous steady of her face began to The grow, swelling to
sound, to swell
her shiver,
rapidly. I thought to break up then swollen off
as
she and
looked and
frightened. streams.
continued,
in a sudden face
skin of her sand field blown toward
a sand sides
the
before my eyes. The Julia disintegrated literally streams like of particles, body blew away from her in dune. The particles curved away in the arc of the magnetic of the room. (P 339) and
in its tissues with Julia's body has been replaced even The biological and all its functionalities, behavior
agents vanishes
technogenic
creatures.
and cognition,
together scattering
have been
as a
replicated
of complex properties and replaced by nano tech

The sand, human evoking a face surface Michel
working in a
swarming collectivity. stream of molecular
Foucault's
"One sand The can at the scene
resonant
certainly edge of of
prophesy
wager the sea."50
for the historical

would be
end of the human

like drawn
era:
in
that man
erased,
disintegration
instantiates
posthuman
splatter-narrativity
the body is broken down into its constituent molecular whereby its cells lysed, its organs and organd?es its tissues ruptured, nents,
into into nary within surrounding autonomous terrains the of discourse the environment nanomachines. "fiction," of nanosplatter contemporary and Far
compo spilled
restructured thereupon instantly to the from isolated being imagi informs and performs identically nanoscience. For when example,
Goodsell human
reconstructs the active biomolecules inside the tropologically as molecule-sized motors, body "atomically precise girders,
memory, sensors, and a host of other useful mechanisms,
random-access
enacts he discursively all ready by bionanotechnology," of the cytological the postvital realm, now disintegration "already harnessed" by the transformative The biological power of nanobiology.51 as the nanotechnological: is torn apart and refabricated "As you read
these body. words, These 10,000 are true different nanomachines (9). are These at work inside your are nanomachines" nanomachines
to be harnessed
296
NEW
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HISTORY
the the organism and fracturing released into the world by pulverizing their will still perform cell: "Remarkably, many of these nanomachines
atom-sized functions after they are isolated and purified. .. . They an an organism selection," do not
have
molecular
to be
sequestered
machine" for,
safely
(9). The
inside
"the
cells. Each
enclose of
one
is a self-sufficient
obsolete and
morphogeny, separate it from
the
although environment
organism to need is a product
represents
evolutionary
cell so that information within a defined "to enclose genetic developed the cell may compete with other cells," once nanobiology dispenses with
natural evolution, "the requirement for containment may also become
can be repli of the organism functionalities unnecessary" within: "Ifwe are the nanomachines cated and improved by unbounding we don't have to worry about the designing, [evolutionary] doing we can simply build the machine of the best design. and competition (220). The
One might bionanomachines imagine that a 'gray come goo' together composed and ... perform of a collection tasks of and specific
then disassemble
rent in vitro
when
finished"
on the
(220-21).
self-replication
To
of
the nanobiologist,
information-carrying
cur
research
molecules
towards an imminent demonstrates progress postbiological even because future, opens the possibility "[t]oday, bionanotechnology entities of the of creating new life forms" (277). These postbiological or to to biological materials, not "limited be nanoworld would "opened" even for sentience: at could strive all" materials and (278), they physical
"If consciousness also turns out to be reducible to physical principles,
be in artificial consciousness (beings?)" would objects life Artificial of the within (298). nanobiology capabilities completely ma molecular "self-sufficient and 10,000 and artificial intelligence creation of
chines" crawl out of the wreckage of the now "unnecessary" organism.
the gaze in both science and fiction unleashes life by of postbiological of the cell and fosters the ascension machines the future therefore destines the body. Nanotechnology splattering a to its immanent a violence fundamentally corporeal violence, through a violence that own rhetorical practices, towards the embodied present as This irreduc inevitable. nanofuture the postvital determines already the transformative way of scrutinizing ible violence of nanotechnology's Marrek nanoscientist in Marlow's Nano when world John registers has become nanofuture the posthuman that unleashing determines a that is itself this through unavoidable?determines logical process The nanoscientific inherently plan, but with
logic of
and clinically violent: "Jen had at first argued against John's each objection and eviscerated in the end he had dissected the cold blade of reason" (N 354). The specular and speculative
nanoscience, as a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way of
rhetoricizing
the real,
is itself a splatter-technology.
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
297
then, the violent logic of
Shared
across
nanofiction
and
nanoscience,
nanosplatter
contingent For example,
deconstructs
and temporary not in Prey,
the biological
assemblage do only of
body
and
refabricates
it as a
nanomachines. self-actualizing nanoswarms autonomous colonize
human
bodies,
epistemological cal organism,

swarm. blood, really Or more liver, the
the disintegration-events in the novel trigger an about the ideational coherence of the biologi that already "a human being is actually a giant suggesting but revision
precisely, a it's a swarm separate of all these of swarms, What we swarms. because refer each to as a [It's] organ? 'body' literally is swarm. organ
kidneys?is combination
. . .
into nothing but a swirling mass of cells and atoms, clustered together smaller swirls of cells and atoms" (P 260). Similarly in Bloom, when we learn that the human beings disintegrated by the mycora have not been we see but that the organism is merely destroyed merely "unpacked,"
one of temporary symbiotic assemblage cooperation that molecular where multitudes entities of can accrete, one can form come nanomachines
together
be
for mutual
support. But while

out that
the "unpacked"
life"
human
other
body can
modes
restructured,
it turns
"technogenic
prefers
of phenomenal besides materialization that of biology: "This limited this solid confines. to return to this form, few choose form, flesh, Very this solid flesh, because it confines. We choose to remain Unpacked" (B 295). Or, as nanoscientist J. Storrs Hall has written of his desire to be into a nanotech transformed utility fog, "What Iwant to be when I grow
up, is a cloud."52
The
ment
imagined
beyond the
preference
organism
of postbiological
even takes a drastic
life for forms of embodi

turn beyond the molecular
in Greg Bear's Blood Music end (1985), where the end of humanity?the of biology?the as we know end of life and the universe out it?plays an of The sequence spectacularly through escalating disintegrations. of nano technical of development "biologic" triggers a serial relocating
life from the organismal to the cellular to the molecular at Virgil the Ulam to the quantum possi sentient mechanical, bility becoming structures of immanent space-time. information Geneticist fundamental creates
single-celled
own bloodstream,
organisms,
they
"noocytes,"
evolve
and, after he
"self-directed
injects
them
into his
though
development."53
with Ulam while transforming all Eventually they begin communicating his cells into copies of themselves. Ulam into a puddle of goo, collapses a fluid mass of noocytes freed from the formal boundaries of the body. Other people become a "infected" with the noocytes, plague of "trans formation and dissolution takes place within a week of infection" (BM of North America dissolves 160), and soon the entire human population
into continent-spanning flows of intelligent cells, "a landscape of bio
logical nightmare"
(BM 229).
298
The noocytes
from swapping
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
exist both
small cell
autonomously
clusters to sharing
and
enormous
in manifold
mountains with
cooperative
of each tissue, other
assemblages, constantly
constituents,
information
of chemical signals: a rhizomatics where new through out structures and properties the reshufflings of biomass. But of emerge the cellular horizon of life also breaks down when the noocytes become aware of the "life" of their own internal components: "[T]heir cytoplasm to seems to have a will of its own. A kind of subconscious life, counter so recently. They hear the chemical the rationality they've acquired inside" (BM 97). The molecu 'noise' of molecules fitting and unfitting evince "a kind of bodies lar structures inside their own single-celled a of and electric sensation life" subconscious "flow life," (jBM 262) pure the "blood music" beyond the ordered mastery of the organism, beyond the mastery of the into the noocyte into themselves, cell. Disintegrating "sinking deeper of universes within" and world, discovering (BM SOI), the layers layers can not with the entities that learn noocytes living dispense only even can the molecule: with and the life, it cell, they dispense organism
turns realm: molecular is matter, out, can self-organize can "Information memory. after all, It can but a well be be below stored stored the even in the of crudities more structure information of the "chemical" in than compactly What of space-time. in the vacuum?"
standing-wave
(BM 330).
reproduction
Therefore,
and
to remove
environmental
the
barriers
noocytes
on
their
expanding
intelligence,
disintegrate
themselves into the quantum probability waves of materiality, destratifying it to their specifications. the universe entirely and reorganizing into its cells, the cells into the thus Blood Music organism disintegrates
their their this molecules, own novel atoms. diminish and Like finally the molecules the to into scales dolls, nesting from the macro structure the quantum at which life manifests to the nano to the pico, of in
the micro
and expan finding greater space for life, for the endless reproduction The in smaller within. horizon and smaller worlds the sion of life's on is narrative makes good physicist Richard Feynman's promise?what to be the foundational often considered promise of nanotechnology? turns out to be the that "there's plenty of room at the bottom."54 Which
same promise made by splatter fiction: "There are no limits."55
Life
anywhere,
in Blood Music
because of it
disintegrates
is everywhere, is now
to such an extent
and restructured the universe by the
that it is no
as physical a
longer
organization
space-time
contingent transcen
dence
structures
of
intelligent
to accommodate
life beyond
the
matter,
ever-expanding,
remade
in its very possibility

ever-growing desires of
machinic
that entities for a space in which to live. The novel concludes "there is no ultimate reality" (BM 332) of the universe, except the reality the exposes literally constructed by the desires of life.56 Blood Music
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
299
as a postbiological discourse: of nanosplatter implications philosophical we the serial see, (no collapse longer, suggesting disintegration through or implosion of space, but rather its unlimited life manifests expansion), at lower and lower levels until there is nothing left but more life. Life,
discontent changes to "life inhabit itself?in a known order universe, to spread instead and changes grow. Life the now universe? marks a
as the abstracted remainder surplus of possibility the stain of possibility as such left behind when This is the end of things seen destratified. not death, but life . nanofiction: of speculations from beyond every possible the molecule,
it is of disintegration; even the universe is
expanding assemblage, the confines of the real. beyond
the furthest through . . life deterritorialized the organism, beyond
The
The fictive
Surplus Life of the Nanosplattered
Body
of nanosplatter echoes the philosophical experiment of and Guattari in Deleuze shattering molar aggregates experimentation and laying open into multiplicities the "domain of nondifference the microphysical and the biological, there being as many between as are in the living" (AO in the machine there machines living beings of this "domain nondifference" the blasted 286). Discovering beyond as sees not the the end of life but nanofiction organism, postbiological or the of "surplus life," the "excessively biological," rather the condition in the of life beyond itself. In other words, the gap made overflow
symbolic unity of the living at the scene of disintegration is not a void
riot. but a fecundity that gives birth to a postbiological at every As we have seen in Blood Music, at every level of disintegration, can to in life there is the level which "final" manifest, approach always a a the of "more internal with noocytes glimpse deeper depth tempting or a limit of life?instead an exhaustion of life." Instead of reaching
stratum of the every organism"?at see a of the forms and organic noocytes' archaeology blossoming assem the universe: numbers novel of entities organismic populating a even and Chardinian cells, molecules, quantum blages, wave-packets, are creatures of thrown off as enlivened the course during "Noosphere" reaching "minimalism of the we a
the noocytes' profligate
odyssey. The postbiological, of alternative modes production life, nanotech life, technogenic nonorganic a direct consequence life, and so forth?as itself giving way to its outside. Offering
describe the then, would of living?machinic life, life, quantum life, galactic of the singularity of "life
singularity,
in the place of surplus in the place of limit, multiplicity as an the postbiological itself alternative presents epistemic
300
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
to the restrictive binary logic of 1 and 0, presence and absence, living and nonliving. This is suggested quite graphically in the final chapter of to unpack himself and join Bloom, during the mission captain's decision the expanses of technogenic entities. This splattering takes significantly a textual within formed the of the place abyss by incompletion chapter's . . ." (5 298, title: "Twenty-five: If You Can't Beat Them aphoristic ellipsis in original). That is to say, the representation of the captain's unpacking that follows this ellipsis is not identical to the presumed-missing phrase, it does not "fill in" the gap just to reinforce its emptiness, 'Join Them," but inasmuch as the novelistic of the captain's disintegration depiction
suggests "joining them," it works as a narrative alternative to any
desire for completion (humanistic) potentially produced by a percep tion of lack in the chapter title. Instead of completion, the novel offers a "joining" in multiplication, even at the formal level its scene of joining scene to of the of the (its disintegration "joining them") incompletion
chapter title as an excess-production of joinings. The captain's unpack
of postvital abundance and machinic ing is a fictional representation to a in and the of connectivities, absence; generated joined place as that the of site the pure negativity. Or, expands beyond multiplicity captain
stress,
explains:
not a
"Better than death,

solution to a
I think"
panic-inducing
(B 302). Which
absence,
is, I should
but rather
logocentric
an effort
itself a
to grow beyond
unity of full presence
the very
and
logocentrism
death the only
that would
alternative.57
make
"life
more The postbiological then, by discovering escapes death, life in the place of absence, and thus finds itself wanting nothing.
collective Mycosystem exclaim: "We do not want. . . We . have
(than) As the
grown
it" (B 297, emphasis in original). They have?they beyond are?plenty. as are excess it." Certainly in such: They "grown beyond they do not lack "life" because that life, always in excess of itself, can they have discovered to accommodate be exploded life." But this is not to say "technogenic are that they are not desiring; of indeed, they quintessential examples
the desiring-machines that, as Deleuze and Guattari have written, become
in the disintegration of visible or market economies) organism,

"Once the structural unity of
those molar
(like the organizations that channel desire lack: through

has been undone, once the
the machine
specific unity of the living has been laid to rest, a direct personal link is perceived between and desire, the machine the machine passes to is desiring and desire, machined" the heart of desire, the machine (AO do not lack anything because their "object of 285). Desiring-machines to it" (AO 26), suggesting desire is another machine connected that the and molecularity
tion moment of machines of
of desire
is not
their
lack but production,

to machines. passage Hence through the "want,"
the desiring-produc
Mycosystem, also suggest at the their
connected
expressing
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
301
and preservation of the "constituent and support desiring-production connect that that and that to, (B instantiate, 297) complexes" they they a their lives. kind of machinic manifest, then, generate technogenic They
desiring-production "beyond" desire-as-lack, across the disintegrated
and deterritorialized such, the Mycosystem

to "the human":
limits of humanistic desire (phallogocentrism). As are radically outside of any desire comprehensible
patronization to say, we have concerns you will
"It is no
not comprehend" (B 297). In registering the existence of this postbiological desiring-realm excess of I should even?or, limits, say, especially?if biological
remains otherness, "incomprehensible," of machinic nanofiction alterity, into encodes its more-or-less a trace of absolute frame traditional
in it
work of novelistic conventions and humanist It is at this perspectives. moment of incomprehension, in which otherness is recognized in its but remains uncolonized, otherness in which the beyond of biologistic discourse but from within the very space of emerges not from without
biologism, assemblage" that of the nanofiction not narrative a monadic reveals "book" itself governed as a by discourses: "literary a single
humanist Johnston's hensible) narrative

biological
but an "information multiplicity" (to use John perspective, of and term) (or incompre multiple signifying asignifying inventoried within the same textual system.58 The regimes the postbiological therefore inhabitation of the performs
at the discursive level, as an inner excess, a trace of "beyondness"
the linear narrative. itself within announcing The text itself, encoding the discourse of the postbiological
simultaneously thus course, within mirrors its and beyond of the comprehension of embodiment figuration postbiological
other
its own emerg
as
dis
which I mean both the disinte ing within biological embodiment?by of the and the surplus continually discovered in life's gration organism is the level, the postbiological place. At the discursive and the figurative an inside the biological, act of beyondness already requiring only to unbind it.Or, as Blood Music puts it: disintegration "They're inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we (BM 138). The escape?" then, is less the "afterlife of life" than the "extralife of postbiological, otherness to biolo life," the "otherlife of life"?the already immanent in the nanofiction inscribes itself within the of that, text, gism place biology while retaining its otherness. It therefore appears that what nanofiction in its most paranoid of nanotechnological expresses?even depictions
horrors?is a fundamental openness to the other already "inside, part of
us by now." I would even suggest that this openness to the other to as much like love. very begins perform something
Nanofiction as love, then . . . love for the nanomachines. A
inside
strange
idea, perhaps,
especially
considering
that this love would
express
itself
302
for entities that not only do not exist?or at
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
least,
do
not
yet
exist?but
emergence upon violently disman regularly depends can to see we But that love is the issue, or the human begin tling body. as as the human becomes is being what issued, inasmuch imagined and of itself the other inside itself, through disintegration, gives carrying up to those entirely fictitious others still awaiting the literally opening future
ogy
also whose
fictive
for their realization.

on a life of its own.
As Crawlers puts
. . . It's like we
it: "It's funny how

surrender some of
technol
our own
takes
life to technology"
we might "possess,"
(C323).
that we
Crawlers suggests
could sever
that life is not a thing

from ourselves and give
that
to
technology object?because
"surrender more life
as the fulfillment
some in us of than our own
of
life
its desire?life divisible

technology," would be to
turns out not and

an
it is fundamentally
ourselves, there
multiple.
then there of
to be an For if we
would be can that
excess
life
broken into parts, in a way that does not of life into parts This (partial shattering to some of it" the and nanomachine, then, is not "surrendering objects) a giving only to be taken away (like humanistic love, which, as Lacan has a giving through which but it rather what doesn't shown, "gives have"), a to life its manifest own." It is a giving of is able nanomachine the "of of in the abundance scarcity, a giving of biological place postbiological of the in the place and the surplus the multiple singular and the be fragmented, subtract from multiplied, the whole.
exclusive: an issuing of "lives" in place of "life."
of the body thus literalizes a love that does The splatter-disintegration not simply give to the other, but gives of the other as the alterity in itself, a gives up the other as an excess that both is and is not itself. So it is less to an opening?an the itself than exposes unpacking?that giving
encounter cornucopia with difference, in of others excavating its discovery the that others are within, utterly "[Y]ou releasing . . .Free free. a
to Unpack, if you choose" (B 297). It is?for they lived happily, after it all?a may pose as a horror story from story of posthuman love.While narra humanism the perspective of biologistic (and many nanofiction of the organism it as such), the deconstruction tives ostensibly depict
necessarily opens itself to those machinic others yet to come, and those
machinic
Nanofiction assertion course,
others
that
already
therefore
inside of it.59
makes a spectacular ... is an set-piece openness to of the Jacques other."60 love."61 Derrida's And In of its
"Deconstruction . .
"Deconstruction
. never
proceeds
without
of vital matters its deterritorialization of the biological, disintegration it inscribes of the organism, closure (or narcissism) from the autopoietic an anticipatory trace of the technogenic other already "inside us, part of
us site by of now." our It suggests, becoming indeed, alien to that "They ourselves?a are us." site Nanofiction of xenomorphosis, is thus a or
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
303
ethical
an by sameness
what Ann Weinstone

posthuman zone of unconditional erate offering devotion relationality,"
has called
where the self avatar an never
the "avatar body." An

and body other intersect, is characterized noncharismatic, into static
space of
"undecidable "a nonheroic, and or delib
hospitality, can that
indiscriminate, resolve
absolute
ismade "semiotic flesh" at difference."62 The avatar body of nanofiction of human of the text (a polyglossia and nonhuman the interface encoded in the same literary assemblage) and the imaginary discourses to itsmolecular (the organism opened splattered body of disintegration
others): textual and conceptual, the avatar body emerges as a "thor
and nonhuman identities oughfare into of each self-other. other, constantly decomposed pass through globs avatar body is a vehicle through which postbiological The nanosplattered takes up residence and finds a room of its own (plenty of otherness room!) inside the human imaginary. For the avatar body draws the reader into its ethical zone of relationality (as one of itsmany inhabitants) by asking us to recognize our own bodies as intersections the human between subject and the field of self
motivating matter that inhabits our cells but overflows our selves. By
of relations"
(160) where
human
the machinic flaying human but exceeds the it, phylum subject continually as a nanofiction works That in its read is, itself splatter-technology. being of embodi (red?), it acts as a literary-machine engineering possibilities ment in which multiplicities of lives can exist together beneath the same
tattered For sent via the skin. Even now. different post towards nanomachines their becoming-entity, at work inside embody our bodies," "10,000
the body open that traverses
to awareness
of
the fraction
of
semiotic
the machinic
otherness already inside us. They are the postbiological inmodeling the biological. And nanofiction, the human of encounter between the human self and the machinic
the same ourselves, space, to thereby actually a enables make for us to imagine a ourselves containing without "body serves as
abiding within body as a place others sharing

more life organs"?a than
materialization
of organs, but
of the avatar body?which

body upon which that
is "not an empty body

which organs
stripped
... is
to crowd phenomena, distributed in Brownian motion, in the according form of molecular In Forman's (TP 30). multiplicities" Prey, Jack
encounter with the nanoswarms enables him to recognize the infrahu
man
"swarm intelligence" already comprising him, and he begins to think himself a body without organs, a body without a governor, a body without
control: over rarely our "The control . . . to brain of our behavior is not located rules for in our human that brains. beings matter, . . a . It's all bodies. comes '[S]warm intelligence' . . . And occurs . . . and lot [T]he of
consciousness. processing
sophisticated
beneath
awareness
304
whole and structure purposefulness, of consciousness, is a user and illusion. the We human don't
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
sense have
of
self-control control
conscious
over ourselves
Identifying of the consciousness," body that
at all. We
the realm
just think we do"

of self-motivating translates giant swarm ...
(P 260-61).
beneath flux of our of "structure the body?
matter
nanofiction is "actually a
this material a swarm
swarms"
(P260)?
it for its extrahuman "And for all we autogenesis: sense of itself as swarm some sort of had knew, rudimentary an entity" (P261). It stages the phenomenological impact of this swarm within and without the human, this multiplicity that is simultaneously of the the desiring-entities cohabiting now-postbiological body alongside and accommodates this damned human human "I." 'Just because it was themselves as T didn't mean
And announcing nanofiction to us that writes we are
beings went true" (P261);

them not as alone they inside
of around thinking in reality, we contain

"come ourselves. to conscious So while
multitudes. ness,"
of nanoswarms in order to Jack Forman fights the symbiotic aspirations surname it seems this the future (as his "for man," indicates) preserve battle has already been lost. Because if these novels work to perform the postbiology of the human in its experiential encounter with the text, they enact the epistemic precondi
tioning nascent current necessary for the nanomachine to be recognized as "technogenic
life" in the future.

traces successes of
Similar
the of future,
to the way
signs
that some nanobiologists

life, contained
discern
within
of machinic engineering?thereby
biomolecular
tautologically
constructing
eventually
the conditions
emerge?nanofiction
of possibility
too projects
for
a
"living
technogenic
technologies"
future from
to
within
or love, that it bodies forth. It self-alienation, an to of the and the puts according proceeds postbiological "postness" trace of the technogenic inside our bodies. The biological is anticipatory in itself. thus stamped with its future as the surplus otherness unfolding is a posting, a sending, a giving of its destiny For if the postbiological then by "addressing" the biological, future beyond towards a recipient to entail that future it seems already the future (I am, of course, to of Its of the Derrida's logic analysis postal referring destining).63 the zone of
"destination" an sense effect of of appears narrative inscribed on the speculation . . . "the end" "gift" of (some (since has of) symbolic narrative already our surface of the present some if our been if, like the of this as always written). entails As
destining the to the future
been
present?even opened so many nanofuture
visionary has
the by accounts
already now
of speculations of nanotechnology become inevitable.64
biology?has already our own narratives. As have Ostman claimed, writes
destining:
for some,
"What appears
who are
to be the future
unfolding it into
for many,
the present."65
is already
Or,
the past
as Marlow
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
305
to Nano: "It cannot be prevented" (N puts it in his authorial postscript in original). 369, emphasis But at the same time, it is the posting of this future that opens it to the indeed, to the possibility of this letter not possibility of otherness?even, a future destined to noth in its destination?and negotiating reaching of the ing other than its own possibility of becoming specularity different, the post opens postbiological,
eyes), nanofiction
to the otherness nailing

also makes
in itself. For by posting the immanent it up for us to see (if only from the corners of our
us aware of the limitations of a presentism
us to possible realms of otherness that may yet come, or that extremes of cosmic distance may yet already exist, at the exobiological or the nanobiological extremes of terrestrial interiority. Do nanobacteria that blinds
have a future? Do nanomachines? Along with speculative nanoscience,
of nanofiction work to make the experiments these futures at least even now. As Brian has nanofiction written, Attebury possible, "convey [s] is from the which also the in world which we world, messages quantum have been living all along without knowing it."66
Or, to think of it another way: even as narrative fiction speculates
able to recog upon the nanosplattered body, we become increasingly nize the postbiological lives of the nanoscale world through and beyond our own biological lives, and thus we step up to the "dance of agency" with the machinic phylum, both dancing partners made equal in love,
opening to each other.
Harvard
University
NOTES
I am grateful their wonderful 1 Mihail Current to Stephen Greenblatt, advice and thoughtful "Nanotechnology: in Biotechnology 14 Katherine Mark Jerng, and Carol Wald for the writing of this essay. during with Modern and Medicine," Convergence Biology uses 337-46. Nanodiscourse the terms (2003): Hayles, suggestions
C. Roco,
Opinion
"nanobiology," "nanobiotechnology," lexicon has yet to be stabilized?for defines as "wet nanotechnology," to understand and principles (337).
techniques biological nanoscale"
and "bionanotechnology" synonymously?a specific what NNI chairman Richard Roco, following Smalley, or "the field that applies the nanoscale and principles transform and which uses biosystems (living or non-living)
to create new devices and materials and systems integrated from the In this essay, Iwill use to designate "wet nanotechnology" "nanobiology" to which the extent as it colonizes the nanoscience, generally, emphasizing increasingly transforms the foundations of what has tradition systems of biotechnology, experimental ally been called "biology." The epistemic of the organism in the 1990s with the shrinkage registered "discovery" as small as 30 nm across, found nanobacteria, particles seemingly self-replicating from human stones to ancient strata to Martian meteorites. everywhere kidney geological s demonstration that a cell must be at least 140 nm across to contain Despite Jack Maniloff 2 of requisite DNA and proteins, "nanobacteriologists" maintain that nanobacteria are alive
306
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
because results than
they metabolize released by Mayo
and reproduce themselves. Though Clinic in 2004 suggest researchers organisms"; in Human
are viruses, probably "unique living of Nanobacterial-Like "Evidence Structures American their Journal of Physiology?Heart consider the 2002 announcement intention to fabricate definition
still facing serious skepticism, that these creatures, smaller see et al., M. Miller Virginia Arteries and Cardiac Physiology 287 J. Craig Venter and (2004): HI 115. and Hamilton
Calcified
Valves,"
and Circulatory
Similarly, Smith of molecular
by geneticists a "minimalist organism" of life": the minimum number of biomolecules
"a thereby identify to sustain and needed
a homeostatic to Make New in Justin Gillis, "Scientists Planning (quoted reproduce entity on nanobacteria Form of Life," Washington and Research Post, November 21, 2002). not only a scale change but a conceptual "minimalist reorientation represents organisms" of the biological gaze towards the "vitality" of nanoscale systems. 3 Charles gether," Ostman, Ostman, "Nanobiology?Where 2003, www.biota.org/ostman/nanobio.htm "The Nanobiology Imperative," May 20, 2004). Nanotechnology (accessed 2002, and Biology Come See To also 3, 2004). June www.technofutures.com/nanobio.html
of the Nanotechnology "Bioconvergence: Progenitor Age," Nanolndustries Newsletter, July 2000, www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0140.html. 5 See Colin Milburn, in the Age of Posthuman Science "Nanotechnology Engineering: as Science," Fiction 10 (2002): Kate Marshall, "Future Present: 261-95; Configurations and the Scene of Risk," in Nanoculture: Nanotechnology of theNew Technoscience, Implications ed. N. Katherine Gaps: Science Hayles Fiction the 147-59; Jos? L?pez, (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2004), "Bridging in Nanotechnology," 10 Arne Hessenbruch, 129-52; (2004): Hyle in Discovering of Novelty," theNanoscale, ed. Davis the Negotiation and Joachim Schummer IOS Press, 2004), (Amsterdam: 135-44; Nano: Public The Public Interest of Science in Nanotechnology 14 (2005): 163-83. as Reflected in Understanding
(accessed 4 Ostman,
and "Nanotechnology Baird, Alfred Nordmann, and Schummer, "Reading Book 6 7 Purchase Ostman, Addressing Patterns,"
as destination the scene of disintegration inevitable, already calls the "post effect"; see Derrida, The Post Card: operates through what Jacques Derrida From Socrates toFreud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, of this by the end. 1987). I will say more (Have I destined it?) 8 Ostman, "Bioconvergence." 9 K. Eric Drexler, (New York: Wiley, 1992), discourse that narrativizes nanotechnology. even Jessica Nanosystems: 489-506. and Computation as a technical itself presents "Exploratory engineering" in order to guide the future development of scientific possibility Pressman in nanoscience has argued for the centrality of narrative Machinery, Manufacturing, that the digital (STM) works from Electronic Molecular
"Nanobiology." the future
generally,
with electronic literature suggesting through analogy structures of molecular by the scanning tunneling microscope transcoding see Pressman, A Parable itself as a form of narrative; "Nano Narrative:
Literature," 10 Nicolas
in Hayles, Nanoculture, 191-99. "Terminal Men: Bio technological and the Reshap Pethes, Experimentation in Medical New Literary History, this issue, 169. Thrillers, ing of 'the Human' 11 Stuart A. Kauffman, 8, 72. Press, 2000), (Oxford: Oxford University Investigations cited in text as Q. 362 (hereafter 12 John Shirley, Crawlers (New York: Del Rey, 2003), repr., New York: Del Rey, 1999), 100 (hereafter cited in
13 Wil McCarthy, Bloom (1998; text as B). 14 Ostman, "Bioconvergence." 15 On the cultural history Nature:
of artificial-life in a Digital
Culturing Artificial Life Press, 1998). On evolutionary "A Future for Autonomous Johnston, Agents: California
see Stefan Helmreich, Silicon Second research, and Los Angeles: World of (Berkeley University robotics and autonomous-agent theory, see John Machinic Merkwelten and Artificial Evolu
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
307
see A. G. molecular On prebiotic 473-516. 10 (2002): evolution, tion," Configurations Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Cairns-Smith, of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Origins a and these sciences instantiate the way Press, 1982). On postbiological University On Beyond Living: Rhetorical era, see Richard Transformations of the Life Doyle, posthuman and Hayles, How We Became Sciences CA: Stanford Press, 1997) (Stanford, University Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Press, 1999). Chicago 16 Steen Rasmussen
et al., "Transitions
from Nonliving
to Living Matter,"
Science 303, no.
5660 (2004): 965.

17 18 no. 19 Rasmussen Nadrian et al., "Transitions," 965. C. Seeman, "Nanotechnology and the Double Helix," Scientific American 290,
5 (2003): dian-based
Comes Alive!" ETC Communiqu? 77 Goo: Nanobiotechnology The Cana in (emphasis original), www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=373. on Erosion, a ETC Group and Concentration), (Action Group Technology on uses term the organization, "green goo" (troping watchdog technology-environmental some nanotheorists?see to refer to note 43, below) the danger of "gray goo" imagined by in industrial, medical, the proliferation and of nanobiomaterials military, agricultural, information science as well applications, of nanotech and biotech: as the novel forms of machinic will create life enabled both by the living and
6 (2004): 65, 75,75. ETC Group, "Green
"Nanobiotechnology hybridization on earth" unknown (6). hybrids previously nonliving Kinematic Self Replicating Machines 20 Robert A. Freitas and Ralph C. Merkle, 1. TX: Landes Bioscience/Eurekah.com, 2004), 21
(Georgetown,
has the same potential for artificial As Kevin Kelly points out, "Nanotechnology see as biological evolution molecules"; Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology [nonbiological] MA: Perseus Books, Social Systems, and the Economic World (Cambridge, 1994), ofMachines, account 310. Kelly's that "biologized" enthusiastic suggests technologies pop-science in their unpredictable for this control escape human fundamentally evolvability. Precisely on some nanotechnologists molecular reason, systems emphasize working self-replicating . . . to stifle evolutionary tendencies: "Microscale the need may be able to reproducers times faster [than macroscale thus could up to a million generate reproducers], offspring . . . to 'evolve' hence be far more modifications, likely to randomly yield productive more as inherently Microscale therefore be viewed may risky from a public replicators so the need to design to forestall for adherence and safety standpoint guidelines unplanned system evolution ismore urgent in this realm" Plateaus: (Freitas and Merkle, Kinematic Self Replicating Machines, and 22 Gilles Deleuze trans. Brian Massumi ter cited 23 On 176). F?lix Guattari, (Minneapolis:
A Thousand
University
of Minnesota
and Schizophrenia, Capitalism Press, 1987), 59-60 (hereaf
biology
in text as TP). the history of these forms of biological science (generally speaking, molecular and genetics) that understand life as the controlled, of a coordinated product
or amino a molecule?whether acid?or informational protein particular see E. The Vision the Molecular and Caltech, Foundation, Lily Kay, code-script, of Life: Rockefeller theRise of theNew Biology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) ; Kay, Who Wrote the Book : Press, 2000); Evelyn of Life'? A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford, CA: Stanford University single master Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); and On these regimes of genetic control Doyle, Beyond Living. The nanomachinic entity escapes if it itself is comprised of DNA?by and molecular (or perhaps mastery?even especially) source. its own genetic being and autopoietic 24 On homeostatic 50-84, Cannon 131-60. and Homeostasis and systems theories, see Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, B. from the work of Walter (the former and Francisco V?rela) have had different
autopoiesis the latter from Humberto Maturana
308
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
see as closed, scientific but both self-referential legacies, biosystems operations working to maintain Yet as these systems are theoretically boundaries. closed, autonomously they see V. Cs?nyi and G. cannot easily accommodate invasion; evolution, symbiosis, or parasitic The Evolution of Replicative Kampis, "Autogenesis: Systems," fournal of Theoretical Biology a theory of to account 114 (1985): who propose for "open" self 303-21, "autogenesis" closed systems. For a broad philosophical replicative biological critique of self-referential, "viroid" contamination and systems models living systems as sites of endless (revisioning on Nietzsche see Keith Ansell-Pearson, rhizomatic Viroid Life: Perspectives and the change), Transhuman Condition and 123-50. The (London: 1997), "opened" organism Routledge, the replicative accounts. 25 Doyle, On machines of speculative nanobiology expansive Experiments correspond more or less with the postvital (Minneapolis: these in
contemporary University 26 Eugene (see esp.
Press, 2003). of Minnesota Biomedia Press, 2004), Thacker, 28, 27 University (Minneapolis: on nanomedicine's remediation of the postvital, 115-40 technical postnatural "Toward Complex Matter: and Self Supramolecular Chemistry chemist, 4763, 4764. A leading 99, no. 8 (2002): supramolecular Prize in 1987 for his work on artificial proteins?retrospectively the Nobel as a foundational manufac discourse step towards molecular by nanotechnology Lehn, PNAS
Beyond culture, of Minnesota
For a more Living. see Doyle, Wetwares:
consideration in Postvital
of Living
body). 27 Jean-Marie Organization," Lehn received absorbed turing. 28 For
scientific and life made of nonorganic newly recognizable by recent see Manuel De Life," in Incorporations, shifts, Landa, "Nonorganic philosophical paradigm ed. Jonathan 129-67. (New York: Zone Books, 1992), Crary and Sanford Kwinter Years of Nonlinear History 21 29 De Landa, A Thousand 2000), (New York: Zone Books, examples in original). (emphasis 30 Lehn, Chemistry: "Supramolecular nization and Complex Matter," Reports 31 George M. Whitesides and Macroscopic Mesoscopic C. Seeman and Angela Nadrian from the Bottom From Molecular Information Towards Self-Orga on Progress in Physics 67 (2004): 250. of and Mila Boncheva, "Beyond Molecules: Self-Assembly PNAS See also 4769. 99, no. 8 (2002): Components,"
M. Belcher, Nanostructures "Emulating Biology: Building Up," PNAS 99, suppl. 2 (2002): 6451-55. and 32 Mihail Roco and Renzo Tomellini, eds., Nanotechnology: Revolutionary Opportunities of the European Office for Official Publications Societal Implications (Luxembourg: "absolute discourse. control of matter" is a theme that appears virtually
Communities,
18. The 2002), in nanotechnology everywhere 33 B. C. Crandall, preface Lewis MA: MIT (Cambridge, 34 Bruno Latour, University Andrew Pickering,
Harvard 35
to Nanotechnology: and B. Research Perspectives, ed. Crandall Press, 1997), vii-viii. trans. Catherine MA.: Porter We Have Never Been Modern, (Cambridge, 142-45. Press, 1993), The Mangle some of Practice: nanoscientists Time, Agency, recognize registers when and Sdence a dance Lehn (Chicago: of University
of Chicago Press, 1995). extent to which 36 The nanotechnology and has become becoming for it indeed asks how capable science" and
the machinic
organism creating
nanotechnology's the consequences analyzes
fundamental raised to science, question complex of the universe has given rise to an the evolution (and why?) to answer it by the means of asking this very question and of generating has written of 251). Sandy Baldwin (Lehn, "Supramolecular Chemistry," and with the performativity of the machinic phylum negotiation for phenomenology, in "Nanotechnology! (or SimLifeWorld),"
phylum is the most
writes:
between agency "How matter is
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
309
For a broader 3, 2001, http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_fl.htm. see De at the machinic has danced with of the way human history phylum, large and De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Years of Nonlinear History, Landa, A Thousand Machines 1991). (New York: Zone Books, 288. 37 Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, Culture Machine account life in the modern and biological era, see Sciences (New York: of the Human ... in the Books, 1973). history becomes biology Vintage man in his ambiguous of such an archaeological mutation, appears upheaval profound as an and as a subject that knows" (312). object of knowledge position the Last Taboo of the Screen (New York: St. 39 John McCarty, Breaking Splatter Movies: and its confrontational of aesthetics 1. On Martin's Press, 1984), literary splatter 38 On the reflexive construction of the human Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Foucault writes: An Archaeology "When natural see Paul M. Sammon, in Splatterpunks: and ideological subversion revolution, "Outlaws," Extreme Horror, ed. Sammon Xanadu, 1990), 272-346. (London: in and the Body Clive Barker, 40 Jay McRoy, "There Are No Limits: Splatterpunk, 17 (2002): 133, 130. extremis," Paradoxa Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology ofMonsters 41 Judith Halberstam, (Durham, NC: Duke 42 While University not all 144. Press, 1995), nanofiction features texts imagery?many splatter is correspondingly aesthetic focus on "dry" desiccated?
and their nanotechnology (nonbiological) scenes of splatter appear enough frequently a major extensive considered topos. For more thematic Insistent
see Brooks Landon, characteristics, Narratives in Science Allure of Nanotechnology See also Tony Miksanek, 132-46. Nanoculture, "Microscopic for Nanotechnology Fiction's Bags: Science Prescription Medicine 43 Anchor 20 (2001): 55-70. of Creation: See Drexler, Engines
to be of science fiction in this category of nanotech narratives and their coverage "Less IsMore: Much Less IsMuch More: The Fiction Doctors in Hayles, Literature," and Molecular Black Literature ed. and
and Medicine," 2nd
The Coming Era ofNanotechnology, Bill Joy, "Why the Future 172-73; 1990), Books/Doubleday, and Robert A. Freitas, Jr., "Some Limits Wired 8, no. 4 (2000): 238-63; with Public by Biovorous Policy Recommendations," Nanoreplicators, 2000, www.foresight.org/NanoRev/Ecophagy.html (accessed July 15, a Deleuzian form of "perception 44 Disintegration embodies [that]
Doesn't to Global
(New York: Need Us,"
Ecophagy Foresight Institute, 2004). entails pulverizing
its dust" (Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and theBaroque, the world, but also one of spiritualizing trans. Tom of Minnesota Press, 1993], 87). Because University [Minneapolis: Conley as an autogenic of molecular the organism exposes agents?a assemblage disintegration dismantled homeostatic autopoietic "meshwork Organism Publishers, 45 John (see TP149-66)?unrestricted "Body without Organs" from otherwise related closure of the cell, it departs view of and of selfless (in principle) from the perceptions, cellular interdependent such as the a entities, in Selves," Academic in original) 2004),
as a collective of the organism of Selfless selves" (see V?rela, "Organism: A Meshwork the Origins ed. I. Tauber Kluwer Alfred [Dordrecht: of Self, 107 (emphasis
1991], 79-107). Nano Robert Marlow, (New York: Forge, 2004), cited in text as N). (hereafter 46 David S. Goodsell, Lessons from Nature Bionanotechnology: 32. 47 Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's
(Hoboken: Wound
Wiley-Liss, Culture
(New York:
1998). Routledge, trans. Robert Hurley, 48 Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus: of R. Lane Minnesota Mark Seem, and Helen Press, 1983), 286 University (Minneapolis: cited in text as AO). (hereafter
310
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
49
Michael
Crichton,
Prey
(New York: Harper
Collins,
2002),
177
(hereafter
cited
in text
as P). 50 Foucault, 51
I Grow up, Is a Cloud," Extropy 13 (1994), 52 See also Hall, "Util www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0219.html. on Molecular ity Fog: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," in Nanotechnology: Speculations ed. B. C. Crandall Global Abundance, MA: MIT Press, (Cambridge, 53 Greg Bear, Blood Music (1985; rep., New York: Ibooks, 2002), text as BM). 54 Richard 22-36. Feynman, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," (1960): 55 As 161-84. 1996), 130 (hereafter cited in
The Order of Things, 387. 5. Goodsell, Bionanotechnology, to Be When "What IWant J. Storrs Hall,
Engineering
and Science 23
the advertising "There are no limits" (1986), slogan for Clive Barker's Hellraiser ethos of violent and its incessant destruction aesthetic boundary encapsulates splatter's drive "the beyond." See McRoy, towards and Louis J. Kern, "There Are No Limits," "American 'Grand Guignol': and Socially Redemptive Gore, Sadean Morality Splatterpunk Violence," fournal of American Culture 19 (1996): 47-59. 56 Kauffman: Compare furniture of the universe" consistent search "Iwant because Lehn to say that autonomous the coconstruction agents agents are parts of the ontological of the cosmos emerges "by the self a to make living" (Kauffman, Investiga
of autonomous
tions, 128, 243). Similarly, machinic express phylum)
(the processes self-organizing and that nanotechnology and access to "the and temporal (structural) supramolecular chemistry give spatial (dynamic) features of matter and ... its complexification the drive to life" through self-organization, Matter," (Lehn, "Toward Complex 4763). a as that which intuited interfered the 57 Freud with famously postbiological beyond circulation of Principle, the pleasure principle, ed. and trans. James Strachey alterative see Freud, the drive; Beyond (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961). But in to the pleasures of life, Freud choose trace inhabiting that the postbiological the pleasure calling it the death
for ways that material suggests a common "drive to life"
Pleasure
"death" as the only understanding humanistic fatality over the possibility could instead be a circuitous principle that Freud's that Freud's machinic 58 John death drive glimpse offered
to "more life," a drive to molecularity. Not pathway as the is simply what I am describing but rather postbiological, to the glimpse the psychostructural limits of life is analog of beyond by nanofiction. Saturation by Nobel Odyssey of heroic numbers
alterity
in the Age ofMedia American Fiction Multiplicity: 1-58. Press, 1998), (Baltimore: University Johns Hopkins can act as a of love is suggested 59 That disintegration posthuman expression the biochemist Arthur For Love of Enzymes: The His book Kornberg. Prize-winning a Biochemist MA: Harvard Press, 1989) details Kornberg's University (Cambridge, career of grinding and pulverizing inordinate his celebrated efforts, throughout Johnston, Information
to encounter of organisms, the "beloved" within. While my own organismic enzymes out cannot these I sensibilities for cry help recognizing long-since-disintegrated organisms, as symptoms love towards of a postbiological "scenes of disintegration" these laboratory since the early twentieth the "molecular future" that has been emerging century. in Dialogues 60 Derrida, and the Other," with Contemporary Continental "Deconstruction Manchester ed. Richard Thinkers: The Phenomenological (Manchester: Kearney Heritage, Press, 1984),123-24. University ... : Interviews, trans. Peggy Kamuf ed. Elisabeth Weber, 61 Derrida, Points 1974-1994, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), (Stanford, Ann Weinstone, Avatar Bodies: A Tantra for Posthumanism Minnesota Press, 2004), 41, 156. and others 62 83. (Minneapolis: University of
DISINTEGRATING
THE
POSTBIOLOGICAL
BODY
311
63
64
The Post Card. Derrida, On the "already inevitable" as a trope of nanodiscourse, This in the Age of Posthuman 263-65. Engineering," that exists in deconstructive
metaphysics nanotechnology. posthuman Posthuman, humanism
speculation 65 Ostman, "Evolution into the Next Millennium," available atwww.technofutures.com/charlesl.htm. 2004], 66 Brian Attebery, Nanoculture, "Dust, Lust 161-69. and Other
Relatedly, points Hayles see her of Blood Music, in Hayles, nanofiction; analysis I would, that this deconstructive 252-56. however, suggest and posthumanism and postbiology) (or between biology on the "post" at all. technofutures.com from the Quantum
see Milburn, "Nanotechnology the humanist marks destining to the posthumanism of relationship to the recalcitrant humanism inhabiting How We Became between enables dynamic is what
(2003)
[cited
20 May in
Messages
Wonderland,"
Hayles,

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Nano/Splatter: Disintegrating the Postbiological Body Author(s): Colin Milburn Source: New Literary History, Vol. 36, No.

Nano/Splatter: Disintegrating Postbiological Body

the floor. Pool, "Bodies" (2001)

and the Machinic

of the U.S. National

ate this shift), but

synthetically engineered related pseudoproteins,

components, quasi-viral biomolecular prosthetics,

New Literary History, 2005, 36: 283-311

of life" yet to come:

space via a narratival

the domain of nanobiology, The molecular "entity" materializes

of their "becoming-entity." as an object of knowledge

to the fictive this argument that the narratives suggesting

of speculative experiments of disintegration informing

forms of "postbiological theorist Stuart complexity

agent more a new

molecular cycles," life itself."11

into the postbiotic,

But this is a future and already. Seeman and Bernard

that does not wait for the future?it

by nanobiologists experiments Yurke, using DNA as a self-assembling

happens now, such as Nadrian engineering

a far cry from

the replication that do

self-organizing but embodying in themselves: the future

contexts and cytoplasmic and "as self-replicating a machinic alternative "Human-made

powered by materials be long before more

self-replicating nanomachines dream.'"19 For nanoscientists dreams

from waking to create

the support "genetic

of biology: its does to coordinate program"

a "master molecule" or a control it;23 it does not need a

the biological optimized, impelled

that led up to the evolution

are all different

of the machinic of the molecular

ing performance itself suggests to nanoscientists

processes nanotechnology,"30 important

strategies if the machinic

term for a particular

in the process entirely. machinic Already

into the postbiological

dynamic partnership places the liberal humanist

humans and subject's manifest

said, "a re machines and

technogenic traversing new machinic-semiotic

human subject. in the narratival

tion of the "human" and biological

viciously and Jay McRoy has argued and graphic "spectacular

By disrupting to them, splatter

the limits and

dent" molecularities criteria

the thereby redistributing other forms of machinic nanoscientist

nanotechnology into form. any

capable But corrupt

him from revealing

chase-sequences against reporter

colorless disappeared nothingness bone. The was

she watched, in. The men skin,

though all of these screamed then muscle

the outside her

eyes. to notice rapidly