Mariam Motamedi Fraser
Biographic Data
| ID | 252953 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mariam Motamedi Fraser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mariam Motamedi |
| FAMILY NAME | Fraser |
| SIGNATURE | FRASER M M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0009-0005-4380-3094 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 247 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The politics of animal time: Species, race, and the Anthropocene
This paper explores how biological conceptions of species in time can obscure the creativity and invention of animals over time. Traditionally, species has been approached as a problem either for and of biology, or for and of politics. As a political problem, concepts of species are closely tied to concepts of race. This paper negotiates between these two approaches by stepping back from species and race, which are abstractions, and exploring ins…
Dog politics: Species stories and the animal sciences
Everywhere dogs are found, they are stitched into human hearts. But are humans stitched into dogs' hearts? Countless celebrations of 'the dog-human bond' suggest that they are. Yet 'the bond' does not always come easily to dogs. Dog Politics seeks to denaturalise, in different ways, dogs' 'species story', the scientific story that claims that being with humans somehow constitutes dogs' evolutionary destiny. This book asks what evidence exists for…
Writing on the Animal’s Side: Review of Éric Baratay, Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals
Review of: Éric Baratay, Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals. Translated by Lindsay Turner. Animal Voices / Animal Worlds. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. 240 pp. $28.95 (pb
Dog words - or, How to think without language
This article is situated in the context of debates about animals and language, and animal-human relations. It is informed by the argument that words are neither the exclusive property of language, nor the exclusive property of humans. The article 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 …
Words and Walls, Texts and Textiles: A Conversation
The authors explore how the multi-media artist Farniyaz Zaker uses words to establish connections between different kinds of materials in her work, and how her work makes words material. Zaker's conception of dress as 'microcosmic dwelling places' enables the authors to think about veiling practices, Islams and gender not only in relation to the familiar domains of state, piety, subjectivity, consumption, capitalism, public and private (for insta…
Once upon a Problem
This article investigates the specificity of sociological materials and methods in relation to other disciplines and practices (art, literature, science and journalism) and questions the opportunities for sociological attentiveness, experimentation and failure in the context of contemporary UK professional, institutional and academic/intellectual constraints. It asks whether materials and methods are 'sociological' to the extent that they tell ab…
Experiencing Sociology
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 t…
Introduction: Intimacy in research
The introduction to this special issue addresses the production of intimacy in the labour of research. It explores the sensory, emotional and affective relations which form an integral, if often invisible, part of the process through which researchers engage with, produce, understand and translate `research'. The article argues that these processes inform the making of knowledge, shape power relations and enable or constrain the practical negotia…
Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism
This text demonstrates how and why vitalism - the idea that life cannot be explained by the principles of mechanism - matters now. It guides readers through the introduction of understanding of information, complexity and cybernetics in the economy science and art
The ethics of reality and virtual reality: Latour, facts and values
In the context of the question of the extent to which science studies is able to mount an adequate critique of contemporary developments in science and technology, and in view of the proliferating interest in ethics across the social sciences, this article has two aims. Firstly to address some of the implications for ethics of Bruno Latour's, and to a lesser extent Alfred North Whitehead's, conceptions of reality, both of which have a bearing on …
Event
Making Music Matter
This article is based on a performance piece, Thought Conductor # 2, by the artist Bruce Gilchrist. In a live-art context, the signals generated by an individual hooked up to an EEG are converted into passages of musical notation and played by a string quartet. What is happening here, or rather what kind of happening is taking place, is the focus of this article. The article explores the relations between the author, the score, and the sound in T…
Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism
This book demonstrates how and why vitalism - the idea that life cannot be explained by the principles of mechanism - matters now. Vitalism resists closure and reductionism in the life sciences whilst simultaneously addressing the object of life itself. The aim of this collection is to consider the questions that vitalism makes it possible to ask: questions about the role and status of life across the sciences, social sciences and humanities and …
Material Theory: Duration and the Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression
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…
What is the matter of feminist criticism
This paper is situated in the context of feminist debates around nature, culture, the body and essentialism, and focuses specifically on matter and materiality. In part, it is a response to recent developments in the natural sciences which suggest that strictly social constructionist and/or epistemological approaches to matter may be inadequate to the task of analysis and critique. It begins by considering some of the specific conditions under wh…
The nature of Prozac
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 enablement - that is, on what Prozac does or does not enable, and on the relation between enablement and enhancement, normality and pathology. I argue that the implications of the model…
Identity without Selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality
Identity Without Selfhood, first published in 1999, proposes a conception of identity and subjectivity in the context of recent post-structuralist and queer debates. The author argues that efforts to analyse and even 'deconstruct' identity and selfhood still rely on certain core Western techniques of identity such as individuality, boundedness, autonomy, self-realisation and narrative. In a detailed study of biographical, media and academic repre…
Classing Queer: Politics in Competition
This article considers the grounds on which distinctions are drawn between the identities of gender, sexuality, 'race' and class and explores the implications of these distinctions in relation to different kinds of identity politics and, in particular, to the politics implied by Judith Butler's theory of performativity. I argue that what is often taken to be the key site of much queer theory and activism - that is, the reappropriation of signifie…
The Face-Off Between Will and Fate: Artistic Identity and Neurological Style in de Kooning's Late Works
This article explores representations of the artist Willem de Kooning who, during the last few years of his creative life, produced a large number of paintings at the same time as he was thought to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. My focus is on the way that these representations mobilize themes which Jane Goodall identifies as belonging to a discourse of anxiety. In a bid to suggest that the artist is uniquely positioned to adapt to the pr…
Feminism, Foucault and Deleuze
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 concept…
Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism
This book demonstrates how and why vitalism - the idea that life cannot be explained by the principles of mechanism - matters now. Vitalism resists closure and reductionism in the life sciences whilst simultaneously addressing the object of life itself. The aim of this collection is to consider the questions that vitalism makes it possible to ask: questions about the role and status of life across the sciences, social sciences and humanities and …
Classing Queer: Politics in Competition
This article considers the grounds on which distinctions are drawn between the identities of gender, sexuality, 'race' and class and explores the implications of these distinctions in relation to different kinds of identity politics and, in particular, to the politics implied by Judith Butler's theory of performativity. I argue that what is often taken to be the key site of much queer theory and activism - that is, the reappropriation of signifie…
What is the matter of feminist criticism
This paper is situated in the context of feminist debates around nature, culture, the body and essentialism, and focuses specifically on matter and materiality. In part, it is a response to recent developments in the natural sciences which suggest that strictly social constructionist and/or epistemological approaches to matter may be inadequate to the task of analysis and critique. It begins by considering some of the specific conditions under wh…
Introduction: Intimacy in research
The introduction to this special issue addresses the production of intimacy in the labour of research. It explores the sensory, emotional and affective relations which form an integral, if often invisible, part of the process through which researchers engage with, produce, understand and translate `research'. The article argues that these processes inform the making of knowledge, shape power relations and enable or constrain the practical negotia…
Experiencing Sociology
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 t…
Event
Once upon a Problem
This article investigates the specificity of sociological materials and methods in relation to other disciplines and practices (art, literature, science and journalism) and questions the opportunities for sociological attentiveness, experimentation and failure in the context of contemporary UK professional, institutional and academic/intellectual constraints. It asks whether materials and methods are 'sociological' to the extent that they tell ab…
The nature of Prozac
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 enablement - that is, on what Prozac does or does not enable, and on the relation between enablement and enhancement, normality and pathology. I argue that the implications of the model…
The ethics of reality and virtual reality: Latour, facts and values
In the context of the question of the extent to which science studies is able to mount an adequate critique of contemporary developments in science and technology, and in view of the proliferating interest in ethics across the social sciences, this article has two aims. Firstly to address some of the implications for ethics of Bruno Latour's, and to a lesser extent Alfred North Whitehead's, conceptions of reality, both of which have a bearing on …
Material Theory: Duration and the Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression
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…
Feminism, Foucault and Deleuze
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 concept…
Dog politics: Species stories and the animal sciences
Everywhere dogs are found, they are stitched into human hearts. But are humans stitched into dogs' hearts? Countless celebrations of 'the dog-human bond' suggest that they are. Yet 'the bond' does not always come easily to dogs. Dog Politics seeks to denaturalise, in different ways, dogs' 'species story', the scientific story that claims that being with humans somehow constitutes dogs' evolutionary destiny. This book asks what evidence exists for…
Dog words - or, How to think without language
This article is situated in the context of debates about animals and language, and animal-human relations. It is informed by the argument that words are neither the exclusive property of language, nor the exclusive property of humans. The article 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 …
Making Music Matter
This article is based on a performance piece, Thought Conductor # 2, by the artist Bruce Gilchrist. In a live-art context, the signals generated by an individual hooked up to an EEG are converted into passages of musical notation and played by a string quartet. What is happening here, or rather what kind of happening is taking place, is the focus of this article. The article explores the relations between the author, the score, and the sound in T…
The Face-Off Between Will and Fate: Artistic Identity and Neurological Style in de Kooning's Late Works
This article explores representations of the artist Willem de Kooning who, during the last few years of his creative life, produced a large number of paintings at the same time as he was thought to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. My focus is on the way that these representations mobilize themes which Jane Goodall identifies as belonging to a discourse of anxiety. In a bid to suggest that the artist is uniquely positioned to adapt to the pr…
Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Feminism, Foucault and Deleuze
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 concept…
The Face-Off Between Will and Fate: Artistic Identity and Neurological Style in de Kooning's Late Works
This article explores representations of the artist Willem de Kooning who, during the last few years of his creative life, produced a large number of paintings at the same time as he was thought to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. My focus is on the way that these representations mobilize themes which Jane Goodall identifies as belonging to a discourse of anxiety. In a bid to suggest that the artist is uniquely positioned to adapt to the pr…
Identity without Selfhood: Simone de Beauvoir and Bisexuality
Identity Without Selfhood, first published in 1999, proposes a conception of identity and subjectivity in the context of recent post-structuralist and queer debates. The author argues that efforts to analyse and even 'deconstruct' identity and selfhood still rely on certain core Western techniques of identity such as individuality, boundedness, autonomy, self-realisation and narrative. In a detailed study of biographical, media and academic repre…
Classing Queer: Politics in Competition
This article considers the grounds on which distinctions are drawn between the identities of gender, sexuality, 'race' and class and explores the implications of these distinctions in relation to different kinds of identity politics and, in particular, to the politics implied by Judith Butler's theory of performativity. I argue that what is often taken to be the key site of much queer theory and activism - that is, the reappropriation of signifie…
The nature of Prozac
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 enablement - that is, on what Prozac does or does not enable, and on the relation between enablement and enhancement, normality and pathology. I argue that the implications of the model…
What is the matter of feminist criticism
This paper is situated in the context of feminist debates around nature, culture, the body and essentialism, and focuses specifically on matter and materiality. In part, it is a response to recent developments in the natural sciences which suggest that strictly social constructionist and/or epistemological approaches to matter may be inadequate to the task of analysis and critique. It begins by considering some of the specific conditions under wh…
Material Theory: Duration and the Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression
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…
Making Music Matter
This article is based on a performance piece, Thought Conductor # 2, by the artist Bruce Gilchrist. In a live-art context, the signals generated by an individual hooked up to an EEG are converted into passages of musical notation and played by a string quartet. What is happening here, or rather what kind of happening is taking place, is the focus of this article. The article explores the relations between the author, the score, and the sound in T…
Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism
This book demonstrates how and why vitalism - the idea that life cannot be explained by the principles of mechanism - matters now. Vitalism resists closure and reductionism in the life sciences whilst simultaneously addressing the object of life itself. The aim of this collection is to consider the questions that vitalism makes it possible to ask: questions about the role and status of life across the sciences, social sciences and humanities and …
Inventive Life: Approaches to the New Vitalism
This text demonstrates how and why vitalism - the idea that life cannot be explained by the principles of mechanism - matters now. It guides readers through the introduction of understanding of information, complexity and cybernetics in the economy science and art
The ethics of reality and virtual reality: Latour, facts and values
In the context of the question of the extent to which science studies is able to mount an adequate critique of contemporary developments in science and technology, and in view of the proliferating interest in ethics across the social sciences, this article has two aims. Firstly to address some of the implications for ethics of Bruno Latour's, and to a lesser extent Alfred North Whitehead's, conceptions of reality, both of which have a bearing on …
Event
Introduction: Intimacy in research
The introduction to this special issue addresses the production of intimacy in the labour of research. It explores the sensory, emotional and affective relations which form an integral, if often invisible, part of the process through which researchers engage with, produce, understand and translate `research'. The article argues that these processes inform the making of knowledge, shape power relations and enable or constrain the practical negotia…
Experiencing Sociology
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 t…
Once upon a Problem
This article investigates the specificity of sociological materials and methods in relation to other disciplines and practices (art, literature, science and journalism) and questions the opportunities for sociological attentiveness, experimentation and failure in the context of contemporary UK professional, institutional and academic/intellectual constraints. It asks whether materials and methods are 'sociological' to the extent that they tell ab…
Words and Walls, Texts and Textiles: A Conversation
The authors explore how the multi-media artist Farniyaz Zaker uses words to establish connections between different kinds of materials in her work, and how her work makes words material. Zaker's conception of dress as 'microcosmic dwelling places' enables the authors to think about veiling practices, Islams and gender not only in relation to the familiar domains of state, piety, subjectivity, consumption, capitalism, public and private (for insta…
Dog words - or, How to think without language
This article is situated in the context of debates about animals and language, and animal-human relations. It is informed by the argument that words are neither the exclusive property of language, nor the exclusive property of humans. The article 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 …
Writing on the Animal’s Side: Review of Éric Baratay, Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals
Review of: Éric Baratay, Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals. Translated by Lindsay Turner. Animal Voices / Animal Worlds. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. 240 pp. $28.95 (pb
Dog politics: Species stories and the animal sciences
Everywhere dogs are found, they are stitched into human hearts. But are humans stitched into dogs' hearts? Countless celebrations of 'the dog-human bond' suggest that they are. Yet 'the bond' does not always come easily to dogs. Dog Politics seeks to denaturalise, in different ways, dogs' 'species story', the scientific story that claims that being with humans somehow constitutes dogs' evolutionary destiny. This book asks what evidence exists for…
The politics of animal time: Species, race, and the Anthropocene
This paper explores how biological conceptions of species in time can obscure the creativity and invention of animals over time. Traditionally, species has been approached as a problem either for and of biology, or for and of politics. As a political problem, concepts of species are closely tied to concepts of race. This paper negotiates between these two approaches by stepping back from species and race, which are abstractions, and exploring ins…
Sociology (15 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works)