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The International Prison System
Overview
This project offers a novel theorization of international politics based on Foucault’s notions of governmentality, panopticism, and discipline. The nuclear age has shifted the analysis of power from material competition to discursive formations in which the existential anxieties of the nation-state are determined by that which may undermine the logic of deterrence – the unknowable alterity of the other.
The next step is to analyze how this model engages with non-state actors. My particular focus is on the figure of the terrorist as both a consequence of, and tool for, disciplinary regimes.
I am also working on what resistance looks like in this model. Is it possible to challenge these discursive structure? Can nation-states or individuals escape the international prison system?
Philosophy of Videogames
Overview
My research on videogames focuses on how various elements such as gameplay, aesthetic form, material constraints, and so on, incorporate political power dynamics into the medium while also allowing novel forms of engagement and resistance.
The next stage of this project is developing a concept of “workification.” If gamification is how the real world has incorporated elements of game design to structure society, workification is how certain real world social structures have impacted the gameplay and incentive structures within videogames. In particular, the pervasiveness of games that rely on a “grinding” structure in which there is no endgame victory condition but rather a perpetual system of playing that becomes indecipherable from work – including one’s alienation from any product of their play or labor.
Iran and Diaspora Studies
Foucault & Iran
Throughout 1978 and 1979, Foucault wrote several articles in support of the Iranian Revolution for Italian and French newspapers. My work mostly centers on attempting to put this plain spoken articles in conversation with his larger philosophical milieu to develop a theoretical analysis of his support. In doing so, I propose a concept of “genealogical revolution” which is defined by its attempt to sever politics from essentialist or teleological orientations. With this concept, Foucault’s descriptions of “political spirituality” and understanding of “Islamic Government” become a sort of prescient form of Derridean hauntology.
Additionally, I attempt to discern where Foucault erred in his musings on Iran. On a theoretical level, I try to analyze the dangers and pitfalls of his “anti-strategic” ethics. I also look for alternative philosophical approaches, such as with Deleuze, that offer better explanations of the Revolution. Beyond theory, I also examine Foucault’s historical understanding of Iran to see what (mis)informed his understanding of Iran, Shia Islam, and his orientalist perspective.
Iranian Identity
My research on Iranian and Middle East identities follows several routes. Most broadly, my work critiques orientalist scholarship framing Middle Eastern identities as “prehistoric” cultural remnants while tracing how Western racial theories politicized interpretations of regional difference, “backwardness,” and civilizational affiliation.
Current debates on Iranian identity are largely informed by this orientalist history. Even in Iran where the education system was developed by European academics at the beginning of the Pahlavi-era. It offered a historical perspective that tied Iran to Europe, severed any connection with its Arabic neighbors, and divorced its culture and traditions from Islam. The ramifications of this historiography informs much of the political conversation both inside and outside of Iran.
Currently, I am working on an analysis of the Iranian diaspora community and its engagement and reaction to the strikes by the U.S. and Israel using a Lacanian approach. Specifically, how the loss of the homeland is a “lack” that drives them to test what constitutes “real” Iranian-ness.
