L’objectif de cette thèse est de montrer que la science-fiction japonaise, encore largement méconnue et très rarement traduite, offre un formidable terrain d’investigation pour une réflexion sur les technosciences, et plus spécifiquement les nanotechnologies. Elle repose sur l’idée que, contrairement aux travaux scientifiques, les textes littéraires, dans leur diversité, permettent de révéler les problèmes socio-culturels et représentationnels liés aux changements conceptuels et aux innovations technologiques. Elle emprunte la méthodologie et le cadre pluridisciplinaire des études culturelles, afin de souligner le fait que l’imaginaire nanotechnologique s’est formé à partir d’un nœud complexe de récits aux frontières extrêmement poreuses, qui s’articulent autour de plusieurs formes de discours (scientifique, littéraire, philosophique, politique, artistique). Structurée chronologiquement autour de trois grandes périodes, ce travail explore des œuvres de science-fiction japonaise dont tout ou partie de l’univers se fonde sur un novum (une innovation science-fictionnelle) associé aux nanotechnologies. La première partie, entre 1959 (le discours fondateur de Feynman) et l’année qui voit la création du terme nanotechnologie par Taniguchi Norio谷口紀男 (1974), s’intéresse cependant aux œuvres qui préfigurent l’imaginaire nanotechnologique, dont elle retrace la formation à partir d’un large faisceau de motifs antérieurs. La seconde partie couvre les deux décennies de 1980 à l’an 2000 lorsqu’apparaissent, sous l’influence décisive de Drexler (Engins de création, 1986), des novums explicitement nanotechnologiques, avec les nanomachines comme motif central. La troisième partie analyse finalement des œuvres du début du XXIe siècle. Les idées de Drexler ont largement pénétré l’imaginaire collectif, et les écrivains japonais de la zero nen-dai ゼロ年代 esquissent des avenirs où les nanotechnologies permettent de remodeler le monde à un tel niveau qu’elles ouvrent l’ère du post-humain. / The present dissertation aims at showing that Japanese science fiction, although it is still largely unknown and not much translated, provides a fertile ground of investigation to reflect on the development of techno-sciences, and more specifically of nanotechnology. Its premise rests upon the idea that, contrary to scientific discourse, literary texts can reveal the socio-cultural and representational issues raised by technological innovations. It borrows the conceptual and methodological framework of cultural studies to underline the fact that the nanotechnological imagination developed out of a complex network of narratives that draw upon a vast array of interpenetrating discourses (from science, literature, philosophy, politics, economics, and the arts). Chronologically structured around three periods, it explores Japanese works of science fiction that are partly, if not entirely, set on a novum (a science-fictional innovation) associated with nanotechnology. However, the first part, running from 1959 (the year Feynman gave its founding speech) to 1974, when Taniguchi Norio谷口紀男 coined the term nanotechnology, focuses on works prefiguring the nanotechnological imagination, tracing back its formation to earlier motifs. The second part deals with the two decades of 1980s and 1990s, when explicitly nanotechnological novums largely inspired by Drexler’s highly influential Engines of Creation (1986) emerge. The third part finally analyses works from the early 21st century. Drexler’s ideas have sunk deep into the collective imagination, and the zero nen-dai ゼロ年代 Japanese writers depict futures where nanotechnology has transformed the world to such an extent that it ushers humanity into the post-human era.

This dissertation examines the politics of representation in biotechnosciences. Through web representations, I examine three emerging endeavors that propose to create large-scale human population genomic databases to study complex, common diseases and conditions. These projects were initiated in different nations (US, UK, and Iceland), created under different institutional configurations, and are at various stages of development. The websites, which are media technologies do not simply reflect and promote these endeavors. Rather, they help shape these database projects in which the science is uncertain and the technologies not yet built. Thus, they are constitutive technologies that affect the construction of these database projects. More needs to be done to explore how to interpret the 'virtual' realm and how it relates to the 'real' world and specific situations. By bringing hypertextuality into the analysis, I explore how knowledges, practices, and subjectivities are created. By adapting the methods of a number of science and technology (STS) authors, I develop a more dynamic lens in which to investigate web representations and 'emerging' biomedical projects. My concern however, is not only in what represents what, but how representations are constructed. The power of the latter derives from its invisibility. In re-conceptualizing representation and new media technologies, I show that these sites are techno-social spaces for creating knowledge, specific ways of seeing, and practicing biomedicine today. The narrowing time/space between generating data, releasing information, and incorporating publics into their endeavors raises crucial issues as to how biomedicine is represented and how broader audiences are engaged. In the dominant discourses, these projects are all situated within biomedical, (post)genomic, and information revolutions. Here, they hang on the technological object, the database, with the ability to contain what we are coming to understand as life/genetic/bio information. Through the moves of both treating these databases as part of a complex system and investigating them through a lens of representation, I begin to include potential participants and broader audiences into the analysis. Informatic bodies, populations, and subjects are co-created at, by, and through these sites as the developing database projects and information are (re)presented. / Ph. D.