Stories of i: For an Ethics of Diminutive Life develops an alternative understanding of ethics by drawing on experiences of passivity. Centering on bad sleep, laziness, and boredom, it shows that diminutive existence is lived on the side of passivity, and it formulates an ethics honouring those modalities. As passivity hinges on reduction rather than the expansion of active being, it teaches the subject to be smaller, to take up less space, and to relate differently to the other and our shared world.
In this way, passive phenomena transform the I into a diminutive self: an i. In English the i is habitually capitalized, which hones a certain understanding of the self as the master and centre not just of grammatical units, but of all relations. Beyond the self-same and overly productive ego of Western thought, Stories of i elaborates a diminutive subjectivity that instead always-already acknowledges its bonds to the other and the world.
