Academic

I am working on publishing two journal articles at the moment:

 

"Toward a Realpolitik of the Left: Retracing the Strategic Cultures of Capital in Socialist and Revolutionary Transitions from Capitalism" is under review 

Abstract: "The scholarship on strategic cultures does not examine capital as a strategic culture in its own right and capitalism as its strategic infrastructure. This conceptual vacuum is also present in Marxist philosophies and strategies that treat socialism and revolution as the effective form of realising equalitarian and emancipatory content, detracting from historicising strategy as an ideological category of practical thought and action. In the absence of a Marxist concept for strategic cultures, socialist and revolutionary situations suffer from a serious strategic deficit. Capital’s strategic cultures go uncontested in such situations, foster capital’s functionaries, and roll back socialist and revolutionary cultures from the inside, effectively facilitating counterrevolutions. First, I review examples from Western socialist strategy and revolutionary theory to situate the need for alternatives capable of displacing capital’s strategic cultures. Then, I distinguish between the strategic cultures of capital and anti-capitalism to differentiate their logic of aggregating power and hegemony. Finally, I examine how gaps in the Rojava Revolution’s alternative strategic cultures reinstated a capitalist parastate in northeast Syria. I outline the lessons learned from this counterrevolutionary relapse regarding the need for a radical realpolitik comprised of anti-capitalist strategic cultures for all spaces of life and politics."

 

“Toward a Folklore of the Left: Retracting the Strategic Models of Fiction from English Realism to Streaming Television” is under review. 

Abstract: "Political art and literature tend to document, dramatise, or deconstruct the mediation of life and politics by foes such as capitalism and artefacts such as logocentrism. I historicise such “mirror models” of political aesthetics, whose strategy is to expose the predominant regimes of representing life and politics or agitate them to suggest alternatives. I do this to make room for “hammer models” of art and literature whose strategy is to purposely mediate the mediations in life and politics, representing the passage from reflection to action. This model, concerned with shaping life and politics, is indispensable to analysing contemporary art and literature’s ‘cynically realist’ characters. Marxist cultural theory generally grasps these cynical portraitures as symptomatic of the masses’ concession to capital’s governing logic. I wager that such portraitures fetishise “strategic cultures” for thriving in capitalism. Ubiquitous in streaming television, wherein fictional professionals, artists, politicians, or scientists cope with adversities via a strategic tool or trade valorised by capitalism, these pedagogical portraitures represent strategies of shaping capital’s logic to advantage and colonise the imagination of radical action. I show that streaming television is a Trojan horse for capitalist strategic cultures, demonstrating the need for an alternative hammer model of art and literature."

 

My refereed short article, “Farewell, Rojava: The Case for Strategic Thinking as a Democratic Necessity” appeared in Philosophy World Democracy in 2022. 

 

Journalism

I am the former English editor of The Rojava Strategy, where we published English, Persian and Kurdish articles on the Rojava Revolution. In 2019, our associated media would attract roughly 30,000 interactions every week.

My articles in English, Persian and French have appeared in venues such as Jacobin, ROAR, Socialist Project, Rabble, Diversité Artistique Montréal, New Socialist, The Hampton Institute and Radio Zamaneh.

I write regularly on international relations and political economy in English, and contribute periodically to Iranian news sites on subjects concerning Middle Eastern Politics, the Kurdish Question and Iranian Cinema.

A select few of my contributions include:

"The Authoritarian Turn of Global Capital and its Contradictions in the USA"

"A Mutating Neoliberalism, Socialist Transitions, and Their Foreign Policies"

"Rojava After Rojava"

"Rojava is Under Existential Threat"

"The Iran Protests: The Revolution is Dead. Long Live the Revolution!"

 

Fiction & Poetry

I am currently working on my first novel whose working title is Impotence. This long and complicated project is nearly halfway finished and reflects my attempts at narrating a folklore of the left, the kind I argue for in the namesake academic article. 

I am also working on my first collection of poems, Mortal Kisses. This new project consists of fewer than ten poems narrating midlife concerns with health, mortality and being loved. 

My poetry and short fiction in English and Persian have appeared in venues such as Leodegraunce and Shahrvand. 

 

Translation