Mariam Motamedi-Fraser - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Mariam Motamedi-Fraser

Words are everywhere. Ubiquitous, pervasive. Yet our relations with words are narrowly defined. H... more Words are everywhere. Ubiquitous, pervasive. Yet our relations with words are narrowly defined. How does the sound, feel, touch, taste, place, position, speed, and direction of words come to matter in their uses? Word begins from the premise that, if we consider words only in terms of language and as images, we overlook a range of bodily, sensory, affective and non-conscious relations with words. We overlook, too, their epistemological, methodological, experiential and political implications. This book seeks to redress this neglect by exploring words themselves in histories of language and contemporary theory, in print and typography, and through a series of empirical examples which include religion, embodiment, photography and performance. Word is a reminder that words live richly in the world. It is an invitation to recognise those non-linguistic word-relations that are already existing, and to bring new and generative encounters with words into being.

Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality

Performativity and Belonging

Theory, Culture & Society, 1997

Dans le cadre d'un recueil d'articles consacre a l'evenement de la pensee de Deleuze ... more Dans le cadre d'un recueil d'articles consacre a l'evenement de la pensee de Deleuze (in «Theory, culture and society», 14, 2, 1997, 1-81), l'A. etudie la relation entre les theories du sujet developpees par Deleuze, Foucault et S. de Beauvoir, en mesurant la contribution du premier aux theories feministes contemporaines consacrees a la question de la sexualite et de l'identite. Se referant a ses propres travaux sur la bisexualite et a la conception existentielle de la femme, l'A. montre que la politisation et l'esthetisation du moi par Foucault restent prisonnieres des techniques disciplinaires et creatrices de l'identite, que seule la conception non-subjective du desir developpee par Deleuze est capable de depasser dans le sens d'une pure productivite

Theory, Culture & Society, 2003

This article addresses the serotonin hypothesis of depression, as it was formulated in clinical a... more This article addresses the serotonin hypothesis of depression, as it was formulated in clinical and laboratory experiments during the 1950s. In the first instance I argue that the `challenge' posed by patients' subjectivities in clinical investigations into the potentially anti-depressant drug iproniazid was not solely due to the tensions generated by the subject/object dichotomy, but to an excess that exceeds the properties of the objects of the experiment, as well as its requirements and conditions. I then suggest that the serotonin hypothesis too is possessed of an excess, and that this can be understood in terms of a real (actual and virtual) existence in duration. By exploiting the notions of the event and of duration, I offer an under-standing of the hypothesis that pertains not to reduction, reproducibility and sameness, but to differentiation, innovation and creation.

In preparation for this conference I thought I'd read again C Wright Mills' The Sociological Imag... more In preparation for this conference I thought I'd read again C Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination. Clearly there's a lot in that book about the pitfalls that sociologists face as they bounce about between the fetishisation of the concept on the one hand, and methodological inhibition and pretension on the other. There's much discussion, for example, of the 'unreality' of 'grand theory' which 'neither enlarge[s] our understanding nor make[s] our experience more sensible'; and of the inadequacies of 'scientific method', which Mills argues yields a precision that is neither necessarily empirical nor true. And even if the product of abstracted empiricism were true, it may yet be unimportant. For Mills, the really substantive issue that concerns sociology is not only the difficulty of shuttling between levels of abstractions-'we must also', he writes, 'speak of problems'. The sociological problem is the bridge between history and biography, and it's in the formulation of the problem that the sociological imagination realises its full potential. It's notable that for Mills, this imagination is as likely to be possessed by 'literary men and historians' as it is by 'professional' sociologists. Indeed The Sociological Imagination is in large part concerned with the problem of professionalisation; with how abstracted empiricism serves commerce and bureaucracy and grand theory serves nothing much at all. It's not surprising, therefore, that the appendix, 'On Intellectual Craftmanship', should read like an essay on the practice of creative writing. As for empirical work, Mills says that he tries to avoid it wherever he can. Nevertheless, sociological problems, while they might require the imagination to formulate, are not themselves imaginative fictions. On the contrary, an important sociological problem, Mills argues, must be genuinely relevant both to the sociological conception of historical social structure and to the detailed information that sociologists collect. While Mills argues that 'no one is "outside society,"' the sociologist is distinguished from 'the ordinary man' insofar as he or she is uniquely positioned to make visible-that is, make relevant-the relations between the daily experience that is here and now, and structures and forces (capitalism, power, patriarchy) which are not visible in themselves. Making the connections between these domains is the political task of the sociologist / which Mills argues should be exercised in work, in educating, and in life.

Review of New Light from the Middle East, Exhibition of photography at the Victoria and Albert Mu... more Review of New Light from the Middle East, Exhibition of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum

This paper interrogates the relevance and limitations of Michel Foucault's concept of techniq... more This paper interrogates the relevance and limitations of Michel Foucault's concept of techniques of the self for a feminist politics of identity and sexuality. It argues that, while Foucault's analysis helpfully enables feminists both to recognise the individuality of the self and to work against it, it also, inadvertently, serves to tie identity and sexuality to selfhood. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the Body without Organs – and especially the notion of bodies defined in terms of affects and capacities (rather than forms or functions) – the article explores the possibility of thinking desire as exterior to techniques of normalization and the self. The argument is based on an empirical investigation of British newspaper representations of Simone de Beauvoir and bisexuality.

2005-2008 A work-in-process. Initiated by myself; co-organised with Andrea Phillips (Curating). T... more 2005-2008 A work-in-process. Initiated by myself; co-organised with Andrea Phillips (Curating). The project brought together staff and students in the Estates, Curating and Sociology Departments. Students chose artist-architect Marjetica Potrc to be invited to design a structure that embodied the intellectual profile of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process.

In this article I want to explore some of the sometimes different, sometimes overlapping ways in ... more In this article I want to explore some of the sometimes different, sometimes overlapping ways in which the reality of facts is understood by Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Alfred North Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze. My intentions here are not at all to produce an exhaustive survey, or to come up with an ideal synthesis of these theorists' work in this area, nor is it to 'compare and contrast' them. Instead, the argument in this chapter folds, unfolds and refolds around these authors with the aim of exploring what their different concepts, or what the same concepts differently inflected, can do. I want to ask where a few key terms - among them, relationality, exteriority, potentiality and virtuality - might lead, and how they might be made to matter. The discussion will be dominated by two attractors.1 The first is event, the second is ethics.

European Journal of Social Theory, 2009

Using C. Wright Mills' book The Sociological Imagination as a touchstone for its discussion, ... more Using C. Wright Mills' book The Sociological Imagination as a touchstone for its discussion, this article addresses the relations between the sociological problem, relevance and experience as they are and could potentially be understood within sociology. Beginning with the historical relation between sociology, science and literature — a relation which has been productively but differently complicated by poststructuralist and postconstructivist theories — this article asks: to what extent does the empirical offer a referent for the sociological problem? To what is sociology obliged to be relevant? Arguing for the continued relevance of relevance, particularly in the light of recent reforms in higher education in the UK and the USA, the article explores how the sociological problem might be transformed — and perhaps, more importantly, might be transformative — if the basic commitments of a research project were not to historical social structures but to virtual structures.

Cultural Critique, 2009

The global reach of biomedicine (which should be distinguished from the reach of its "benefi... more The global reach of biomedicine (which should be distinguished from the reach of its "benefits") is a striking feature of contemporary life. It is pursued by international corporations that produce drugs that are taken by people all over the world, and is embodied in scientific research projects that carry ambitious titles such as The Human Genome Project, The Visible Human Project, and The International HapMap Project. This extensive reaching out across the globe draws attention, once again, to the question of human bodies, and of whether the human bodies that are the targets, objects, and consumers of biomedical research and its products are the same the world over—or not. In this paper, I want to consider two very different occasions in which the problem of sameness and difference was raised.

History of the Human Sciences, 2001

This article addresses the relations between 'nature'and 'culture'(and those ... more This article addresses the relations between 'nature'and 'culture'(and those characteristics associated with 'the natural'and 'the cultural') in the context of the debates about Prozac. Following Marilyn Strathern, I focus specifically on the contested issue of ...

Disruptions is a series that interrogates and analyses disruptions within and across such fields ... more Disruptions is a series that interrogates and analyses disruptions within and across such fields and disciplines as culture and society, media and technology , literature and philosophy, aesthetics and politics. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. Word : beyond language, beyond image / Mariam Motamedi Fraser. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

This paper is situated in the context of debates about animals and language, and animal-human rel... more This paper is situated in the context of debates about animals and language, and animal-human relations. It is also informed by the argument that words are neither the exclusive property of language (Motamedi Fraser 2015), nor the exclusive property of humans. The paper illustrates this point by exploring how some companion dogs make 'dog words' with their bodies and, further, how they are able/can be enabled to transform the meanings of these words by inventing and/or participating in word encounters. In the spirit of Lev Vygotsky, the paper argues that such encounters are a way of thinking with words in 'complexes.' Through a series of concrete examples, the paper shows how intimacy is integral to this thinking, in its every dimension. The ethically optimistic dimension of this analysis, however, simultaneously draws attention to how fragile are the relations between dogs, humans, and words, and how proximate intimacy is to 'other kinds of relations.' With ...

In 2009, by chance, I came upon an archive in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It turned out that ... more In 2009, by chance, I came upon an archive in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It turned out that I was to be involved with this archive in different ways (reading and researching it, helping to raise conservation funds to conserve it, writing inventories of it, and, ultimately, writing about it), over a period of approximately four years. The archive is named after an unpublished manuscript, Nurafkan, which lies at its heart. Nurafkan, or Irradiant in translation, was written by Ali Mirdrakvandi during the 1940s, while Iran was occupied by British and American forces. It is conspicuous that Nurafkan – which runs to 15 volumes and is perhaps 500,000 words long – should be written in English, for Ali came from a nomadic family from Lorestan. Ali's choice of language has raised suspicions in both Britain and Iran: what events must have unfolded for a book like this to be written? And what role, in particular, might the British have played in its creation?...

The Sociological Review

Choice Reviews Online

... this book I will be exploring some of the well-documented 'techniques of the self which ... more ... this book I will be exploring some of the well-documented 'techniques of the self which constitute the boundaries of what ... 12 Identity without selfhood refers implies that sexual identities, in the modern era, are bound to the self, a self which is (principally ... Identity and selfhood 13 25 ...