From the point of view of a diminutive i, Stories of i develops an alternative understanding of ethics by drawing on experiences of passivity. Centering on rest, illness, and eroticism, it shows that diminutive existence is lived on the side of passivity, patheticism, and femininity, and it formulates an ethics honouring these 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.

As such, 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. This research project develops visceral and engaging accounts of sleeping poorly and its unsuspected moral dimensions, of an impotent ethics modelled on a sick self, and of the ethical possibilities of bottomness.