Books by mazyar lotfalian
Contents Preface and Acknowledgments v 1 Introduction 1 2 Radical Critique and the Epochal Unders... more Contents Preface and Acknowledgments v 1 Introduction 1 2 Radical Critique and the Epochal Understanding of the West 13 3 A Techno-Cosmopolitan in the Context of the Secular State: The Discourse of a Muslim Engineer/Politician 31 4 The Scene of Technoscience in ...
Book Sections by mazyar lotfalian
In the post-2009 election atmosphere, spaces of practice and production in Iran are constantly b... more In the post-2009 election atmosphere, spaces of practice and production in Iran are constantly being reshaped, and at times lively political battles are fought over their redefinition. The film industry is going through a difficult time, with jailed filmmakers, film scripts held indefinitely by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, and the filmmakers' syndicate in turmoil. Nevertheless, the production of films for various media types, including film and digital outlets, has continued. The temporality of the 2009 elections was a mere marker of a larger shift in cultural production. Although these transformations had been forming for quite some time, the events of 2009 accelerated it. This chapter argues that the government is an active player in cultural production rather than just an arbiter of what is allowed and not allowed for public consumption.
Peer Reviewed Articles by mazyar lotfalian
In this essay I explore the place of autoethnography in recent Iranian films and videos. Anthropo... more In this essay I explore the place of autoethnography in recent Iranian films and videos. Anthropologists who have in past decades insisted on personal voices as ethnography, have coined the word 'autoethnography' as a category that engenders writing on self and society. This genre refers to a range of writing strategies from autobiography to self-reflexive stories. Authors often situate the self within society through self-narrative in socio-political contexts. Authors of autoethnography often conduct their practice across multiple social and cultural identities, exploring their different identities creatively through experimentation with technology, and through playing with different mediation styles. In what ways do these autoethnographic explorations offer a new opening for selfexpression and cultural critique? To what extent do they act as forms of either mediation or representation and to what extent is it a form of 'reality' staging?
Aestheticized Politics, Visual Culture, and Emergent Forms of Digital Practice, 2013
The aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential election will be explored here from a visual persp... more The aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential election will be explored here from a visual perspective, with attention to its aestheticized politics. The revolution occurred online as well as in the streets, but it has been difficult to evaluate the effect of online activity on the offline world. I argue that both the notion of circulation in new media and theories of representation are insufficient to address the impact of digital culture on protest art and its effect on the public sphere. I propose a theory of practice that accounts for new forms of social practice that is based on a convergence mode of production.
Anthropological Quarterly, Jan 1, 2009
The remarkable coherence of this collection of papers may be due to their shared footing in Melan... more The remarkable coherence of this collection of papers may be due to their shared footing in Melanesia. But we should also take seriously Alan Rumsey's suggestion that we not think of these issues as being peculiarly Melanesian, and use them to help us think comparatively ...
American Anthropological Association Annual …, Jan 1, 1994
Ethos, Jan 1, 1996
Update 2017
DIY Shooter
More than 20 years ago, I wrote a paper analyzing an event that resu... more Update 2017
DIY Shooter
More than 20 years ago, I wrote a paper analyzing an event that resulted in tragic loss of life of a shooter and some of his victims in a Berkeley bar, and its relation to media representation. How was the shooter viewed by the mass-media, the representation of his life, as a terrorist, a mad-man, and how these representations became, in turn, a silencing strategy for a real story to come out. At that time, the gunman was male and a Muslim and the media was pre-social media, it was the age of mass-mediation.
Now, years later, in the age of social networking and Do It Yourself media, another tragedy has happened, not in a bar but in the Headquarter of YouTube, in the morning of April 3rd, 2018. 39 years old walks into one of the offices and injured three people, she subsequently shot herself dead at the scene. This time, its is, Nasim Aghdam, a woman, a persecuted minority in her own country, Iran, resettled with her family in the US. She had been self-producing a range of YouTube videos, form veganism propaganda, cooking recipes, to Persian and Turkish(Azari) songs and dances, narrating criticism of her new society. Her grudge against YouTube: her revenue had been cut due to the alleged lack of popularity. Can She be considered disgruntle employee? How can we make sense of her narrative? Is there anything in the DIY production that needs to be taken seriously, at this moment when social media is at a turning point of self-recognition that it has to be socially responsible and find an ethical path to regulation?
My original paper that situated the narrative of loss and media representation in a context of diasporic psychological condition needs an update! In the age of mass-mediation, I argued that narratives of loss are constructed as a political allegory. In the age of DIY, I would argue that parody and literalism abound, this is the case of Nasim Aghdam. The earlier paper focused on Dashti, a mentally ill person, whose identification with the Iranian revolutionary narrative was central to communicating with the world. In the age of DIY, Nasim Aghdam videos use kitsch parody form of activism, to animal rights, women’s right, and critique of consumerism.
The original paper connected the mental health of the gunman to media construction of his identity, arguing that this connection should be considered in evaluating his madness. One strand of the argument advanced that media is increasingly integrating the individual into the audience. This has not been truer than with DIY media where the producer and the audience are integrated by a feedback loop.
An update to what I called media psychosis, is that DIY allows a construction of reality that, if has gone unchecked and misunderstood, could have tragic consequences. DIY allows construction of a world, a fantasy-reality that conditions the individual to forget that this reality is constructed and not actual.
As the videos of Nasim Aghdam show, she used many images, at her disposal in DIY platforms, to construct a world that she runs it. In that world, she was an animal rights activist, a vegan, a cook, an educator. My update to what I argued more that twenty years ago, in the age of home video, is that the process of individual distraction has increased many folds. “Distracted-ness” is the condition of viewing and production. This condition is conducive to an erasure of any story that could help form her identity in a positive way. In this fantasy-reality, one’s individual voice is replaced by the one provided by the videos. Her plea as a “disgruntle” worker to YouTube, her attempt to enter a world – activist, cook, etc. – all tell us that capitalist mimetic systems need to be taken seriously as the contemporary condition of life.
Following the acknowledgment of Facebook that this platform could actually be a media company and not just a random amalgamation of individuals connected to one another, we need to consider the same for DIY video production. The world that is created by the DIY platform of YouTube can be constructed in a way that may aggravate the pain and suffering of a mentally ill individual. Language, context, and content matter, hence an understanding of those elements.
update 2016
I have uploaded this article that was published in 1996 in Ethos, the Journal of Psychological Anthropology. For the purpose of future media research I found this paper relevant today and hope that other researchers find it useful. The following questions are addressed in this paper. How could we understand personal and political narratives, stories, and its media construction in the globalized world? What are the silencing processes in the media (both mass-media and digital platforms)? What is the relationship between stories that are ethnographically grounded and those that are mediated in abstract forms and then appropriated by individuals? This paper specifically addresses Islamic invocation, as narratives of identity-making and desire for political identification with meta politics in media ecology. Two contemporary cases have renewed the importance of this analysis, the case of hostage taking by Haron Monis in Sydney Australia and the case of Charlie Hebdo in France.
Cultural Dynamics, Jan 1, 2001
American Ethnologist, Jan 1, 2001
International Journal of Middle East …, Jan 1, 2003
Radical History Review, Jan 1, 2009
It may be instructive to reflect on different media types, institutions, and technologies that ha... more It may be instructive to reflect on different media types, institutions, and technologies that have helped disseminate Iranian visual culture since the revolu-tion. Film has a prominent place in Iranian postrevolutionary visual production, as the Islamic Republic both sanctioned and ...
Anthropological Quarterly, Jan 1, 2009
Connected: engagements with media
Technoscientific identities in the Islamic world are changing. The recent resurgence of Islam has... more Technoscientific identities in the Islamic world are changing. The recent resurgence of Islam has raised a new understanding of the West. In contrast to the view that the transmission of Islamic medieval sciences to the West has resulted in a continuity of Islamic values in Western ...
Papers by mazyar lotfalian
Technoscientific identities in the Islamic world are changing. The recent resurgence of Islam has... more Technoscientific identities in the Islamic world are changing. The recent resurgence of Islam has raised a new understanding of the West. In contrast to the view that the transmission of Islamic medieval sciences to the West has resulted in a continuity of Islamic values in Western ...
In the post-2009 election atmosphere, spaces of practice and production in Iran are constantly be... more In the post-2009 election atmosphere, spaces of practice and production in Iran are constantly being reshaped, and at times lively political battles are fought over their redefinition. The film industry is going through a difficult time, with jailed filmmakers, film scripts held indefinitely by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, and the filmmakers' syndicate in turmoil. Nevertheless, the production of films for various media types, including film and digital outlets, has continued. The temporality of the 2009 elections was a mere marker of a larger shift in cultural production. Although these transformations had been forming for quite some time, the events of 2009 accelerated it. This chapter argues that the government is an active player in cultural production rather than just an arbiter of what is allowed and not allowed for public consumption.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Feb 1, 2003
Mullahs on the Mainframe is an ethnographic account of Daudi Bohras, an Ismaili sect in India, an... more Mullahs on the Mainframe is an ethnographic account of Daudi Bohras, an Ismaili sect in India, and a rare subject of research. It has both the blessing of the community and the reflexivity of the author. The title of the book promises an interesting exploration of the intermingling of religion and new media. But the interesting vignettes are more proto–Internet glimpses than solid analyses of the subject. However, the book has other things to offer. It is about the history and ethnography of a Shiעi community, and it examines questions concerning their encounter with modernity.
American Ethnologist, Nov 1, 2001
Radical History Review, Sep 23, 2009
It may be instructive to reflect on different media types, institutions, and technologies that ha... more It may be instructive to reflect on different media types, institutions, and technologies that have helped disseminate Iranian visual culture since the revolu-tion. Film has a prominent place in Iranian postrevolutionary visual production, as the Islamic Republic both sanctioned and ...
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Books by mazyar lotfalian
Book Sections by mazyar lotfalian
Peer Reviewed Articles by mazyar lotfalian
DIY Shooter
More than 20 years ago, I wrote a paper analyzing an event that resulted in tragic loss of life of a shooter and some of his victims in a Berkeley bar, and its relation to media representation. How was the shooter viewed by the mass-media, the representation of his life, as a terrorist, a mad-man, and how these representations became, in turn, a silencing strategy for a real story to come out. At that time, the gunman was male and a Muslim and the media was pre-social media, it was the age of mass-mediation.
Now, years later, in the age of social networking and Do It Yourself media, another tragedy has happened, not in a bar but in the Headquarter of YouTube, in the morning of April 3rd, 2018. 39 years old walks into one of the offices and injured three people, she subsequently shot herself dead at the scene. This time, its is, Nasim Aghdam, a woman, a persecuted minority in her own country, Iran, resettled with her family in the US. She had been self-producing a range of YouTube videos, form veganism propaganda, cooking recipes, to Persian and Turkish(Azari) songs and dances, narrating criticism of her new society. Her grudge against YouTube: her revenue had been cut due to the alleged lack of popularity. Can She be considered disgruntle employee? How can we make sense of her narrative? Is there anything in the DIY production that needs to be taken seriously, at this moment when social media is at a turning point of self-recognition that it has to be socially responsible and find an ethical path to regulation?
My original paper that situated the narrative of loss and media representation in a context of diasporic psychological condition needs an update! In the age of mass-mediation, I argued that narratives of loss are constructed as a political allegory. In the age of DIY, I would argue that parody and literalism abound, this is the case of Nasim Aghdam. The earlier paper focused on Dashti, a mentally ill person, whose identification with the Iranian revolutionary narrative was central to communicating with the world. In the age of DIY, Nasim Aghdam videos use kitsch parody form of activism, to animal rights, women’s right, and critique of consumerism.
The original paper connected the mental health of the gunman to media construction of his identity, arguing that this connection should be considered in evaluating his madness. One strand of the argument advanced that media is increasingly integrating the individual into the audience. This has not been truer than with DIY media where the producer and the audience are integrated by a feedback loop.
An update to what I called media psychosis, is that DIY allows a construction of reality that, if has gone unchecked and misunderstood, could have tragic consequences. DIY allows construction of a world, a fantasy-reality that conditions the individual to forget that this reality is constructed and not actual.
As the videos of Nasim Aghdam show, she used many images, at her disposal in DIY platforms, to construct a world that she runs it. In that world, she was an animal rights activist, a vegan, a cook, an educator. My update to what I argued more that twenty years ago, in the age of home video, is that the process of individual distraction has increased many folds. “Distracted-ness” is the condition of viewing and production. This condition is conducive to an erasure of any story that could help form her identity in a positive way. In this fantasy-reality, one’s individual voice is replaced by the one provided by the videos. Her plea as a “disgruntle” worker to YouTube, her attempt to enter a world – activist, cook, etc. – all tell us that capitalist mimetic systems need to be taken seriously as the contemporary condition of life.
Following the acknowledgment of Facebook that this platform could actually be a media company and not just a random amalgamation of individuals connected to one another, we need to consider the same for DIY video production. The world that is created by the DIY platform of YouTube can be constructed in a way that may aggravate the pain and suffering of a mentally ill individual. Language, context, and content matter, hence an understanding of those elements.
update 2016
I have uploaded this article that was published in 1996 in Ethos, the Journal of Psychological Anthropology. For the purpose of future media research I found this paper relevant today and hope that other researchers find it useful. The following questions are addressed in this paper. How could we understand personal and political narratives, stories, and its media construction in the globalized world? What are the silencing processes in the media (both mass-media and digital platforms)? What is the relationship between stories that are ethnographically grounded and those that are mediated in abstract forms and then appropriated by individuals? This paper specifically addresses Islamic invocation, as narratives of identity-making and desire for political identification with meta politics in media ecology. Two contemporary cases have renewed the importance of this analysis, the case of hostage taking by Haron Monis in Sydney Australia and the case of Charlie Hebdo in France.
Papers by mazyar lotfalian
DIY Shooter
More than 20 years ago, I wrote a paper analyzing an event that resulted in tragic loss of life of a shooter and some of his victims in a Berkeley bar, and its relation to media representation. How was the shooter viewed by the mass-media, the representation of his life, as a terrorist, a mad-man, and how these representations became, in turn, a silencing strategy for a real story to come out. At that time, the gunman was male and a Muslim and the media was pre-social media, it was the age of mass-mediation.
Now, years later, in the age of social networking and Do It Yourself media, another tragedy has happened, not in a bar but in the Headquarter of YouTube, in the morning of April 3rd, 2018. 39 years old walks into one of the offices and injured three people, she subsequently shot herself dead at the scene. This time, its is, Nasim Aghdam, a woman, a persecuted minority in her own country, Iran, resettled with her family in the US. She had been self-producing a range of YouTube videos, form veganism propaganda, cooking recipes, to Persian and Turkish(Azari) songs and dances, narrating criticism of her new society. Her grudge against YouTube: her revenue had been cut due to the alleged lack of popularity. Can She be considered disgruntle employee? How can we make sense of her narrative? Is there anything in the DIY production that needs to be taken seriously, at this moment when social media is at a turning point of self-recognition that it has to be socially responsible and find an ethical path to regulation?
My original paper that situated the narrative of loss and media representation in a context of diasporic psychological condition needs an update! In the age of mass-mediation, I argued that narratives of loss are constructed as a political allegory. In the age of DIY, I would argue that parody and literalism abound, this is the case of Nasim Aghdam. The earlier paper focused on Dashti, a mentally ill person, whose identification with the Iranian revolutionary narrative was central to communicating with the world. In the age of DIY, Nasim Aghdam videos use kitsch parody form of activism, to animal rights, women’s right, and critique of consumerism.
The original paper connected the mental health of the gunman to media construction of his identity, arguing that this connection should be considered in evaluating his madness. One strand of the argument advanced that media is increasingly integrating the individual into the audience. This has not been truer than with DIY media where the producer and the audience are integrated by a feedback loop.
An update to what I called media psychosis, is that DIY allows a construction of reality that, if has gone unchecked and misunderstood, could have tragic consequences. DIY allows construction of a world, a fantasy-reality that conditions the individual to forget that this reality is constructed and not actual.
As the videos of Nasim Aghdam show, she used many images, at her disposal in DIY platforms, to construct a world that she runs it. In that world, she was an animal rights activist, a vegan, a cook, an educator. My update to what I argued more that twenty years ago, in the age of home video, is that the process of individual distraction has increased many folds. “Distracted-ness” is the condition of viewing and production. This condition is conducive to an erasure of any story that could help form her identity in a positive way. In this fantasy-reality, one’s individual voice is replaced by the one provided by the videos. Her plea as a “disgruntle” worker to YouTube, her attempt to enter a world – activist, cook, etc. – all tell us that capitalist mimetic systems need to be taken seriously as the contemporary condition of life.
Following the acknowledgment of Facebook that this platform could actually be a media company and not just a random amalgamation of individuals connected to one another, we need to consider the same for DIY video production. The world that is created by the DIY platform of YouTube can be constructed in a way that may aggravate the pain and suffering of a mentally ill individual. Language, context, and content matter, hence an understanding of those elements.
update 2016
I have uploaded this article that was published in 1996 in Ethos, the Journal of Psychological Anthropology. For the purpose of future media research I found this paper relevant today and hope that other researchers find it useful. The following questions are addressed in this paper. How could we understand personal and political narratives, stories, and its media construction in the globalized world? What are the silencing processes in the media (both mass-media and digital platforms)? What is the relationship between stories that are ethnographically grounded and those that are mediated in abstract forms and then appropriated by individuals? This paper specifically addresses Islamic invocation, as narratives of identity-making and desire for political identification with meta politics in media ecology. Two contemporary cases have renewed the importance of this analysis, the case of hostage taking by Haron Monis in Sydney Australia and the case of Charlie Hebdo in France.