Recent Talks
September 26, 2025 – ISA West, Pasadena, CA: “The Tragedy of Nuclear Power Politics: Realism and the Moral Order of the Bomb”
Recent Works
A selection of my latest papers in philosophy and political theory.
Death of the War Machine
The Warrior, the Soldier, and the Noble Lie
A genealogy of the warrior’s shift into disciplined soldier and its impact on global politics.
The Leviathan of the Bomb
Hobbes, Realism, and the Intl. Prison System
A new theorization of international relations in the nuclear age emphasizing the role of discursivity.
Video Games as Microresistance
Challenging Coercive Mimetics in Video Games
An exploration of how play style can challenge disciplinary strategies in ergodic literature.
Walking Through the Picture Plane
Video Games and the Materialism of the Image
How the evolution of perspective in art materially influences video game construction and gameplay.
Haunting Foucault
Genealogical Revolution and the Specter of Islam
An analysis of Foucault on the Iranian Revolution exploring a new form of revolutionary praxis.
Toy Soldiers
The End of the Warrior Class in the Nuclear Age
Examines the transformation of warriors into disciplinary agents of power in the nuclear age.
A Vision of the East
Foucault, Iran, and the History of Orientalism
Traces the history of academic orientalism that shaped Foucault’s perspective on Iran.
Nuclear Metaphors
Derrida and Kato on Nuclear Discourse
Engages the debate on nuclear discourse and the erasure of suffering in the Fourth World.
Naming Nationalism
How Iran and Persia Frame the Nation
Examines how naming constructs competing national, racial, and geopolitical identities in Iran.
Traveling to the State of Exception
The Bare Life of Sir Alfred Mehran
An exploration of juridical liminality to engage notions of sovereignty and identity under empire.
Non-Apologies
Culture, Competition, & Ethics at Hainan
An advocacy for the use of Levinasian apologies in place of the hardline politics of “saving face.”
An Unnatural Science
A Defense of Political Economy
A criticism of economics as science, arguing the political structures ontologically precede markets.
Of Gods and Kings
The Authority and Formation of the State in ATP
An analysis of the Iranian Revolution through Deleuze’s “On Several Regimes of Signs.”
Press Pause to Play
Stopping the Game as a Form of Engagement
How pausing video games functions as a player-driven poststructuralist critique of narrative form.