Nanoterror

From bioterror to microterror

Nanoterror is Luciana Parisi's and Steve Goodman's name for the affective threat produced when nanotechnical intervention targets the communicative infrastructure of microbial life. Their sequence moves from terror as intensified fear, through bioterror as fear of invasion and microterror as bacterial contagion, to nanoterror as the felt prospect of matter being redesigned at the atomic scale (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, pp. 1–2).

Microterror already breaks the border between enemy and organism. Endosymbiosis means that nucleated cells descend from bacterial merger, while immune systems host, facilitate and combat microbial populations to which they remain materially connected. Antibiotics intensify this war by selecting and circulating resistant plasmids; the threat of contagion is immanent to the bacterial network rather than arriving from a pure outside (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, pp. 9–11).

Reprogramming communication

Nanoterror begins at the point where technical power no longer merely kills pathogens or anticipates invasion, but attempts to redesign bacterial communication itself. The essay discusses drugs intended to interrupt quorum signaling and prevent biofilm formation: their object is the pattern by which colonies exchange information, adapt and assemble (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, pp. 11–12).

Their formula “Nanoterror is the affect of nano-design” directs the concept at the bacterial body and its virtual becoming. It is a virtual microwar in which vaccines, smart biomolecular sensors and nanoengineered chemistry may breed new microbial cities, resistant organisms and biochemical weapons by acting on the cooperative behavior of colonies (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, p. 12). The threat is not simply extermination but the preemptive modulation of the conditions under which microbial competitors emerge.

Affect, preemption and scale

The concept connects molecular intervention to security culture through affect. Simulations of epidemics move from deterrence, to preparing for a modeled future, to engineering the future's conditions. Fear becomes operational before a threat is actual, and the human body amplifies nano- and micro-vibrations into collective sensation (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, pp. 13–14). Nanoterror thus belongs beside mnemonic control as a theory of power acting on futurity rather than merely repressing present conduct.

CONTRADICTION The essay refuses both the dystopia of human-made destruction and the probiotic fantasy that cooperation abolishes conflict: nanoengineering can open evolution to unprecedented mutation while also seeking to eliminate the very competition through which microbial variation occurs (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/Parisi _ Goodman - The Affect of Nanoterror.pdf, pp. 12–13). The later Nanoengineering of Desire likewise treats nanotechnology as an intervention in indeterminate atomic sociabilities, not as either sovereign mastery or a neutral continuation of nature (Luciana Parisi/Texts/Essays/The Nanoengineering of Desire.pdf, pp. 11–15).