Abstract

‘Small Experimental Action’ is a title derived from Freud's account of thinking. The piece draws attention to the psychoanalytic conception of thinking as an experimental action, and seeks to draw attention to writing as an experimental action, and because it is concerned with reading literary and psychoanalytic texts it draws attention to reading as an experimental action too. It explores agency and risk in ways directly inspired by Shoshana Felman's account of reading, and by the voyage of the coracle in Stevenson's Treasure Island.