Peer-reviewed 

Oveisy, F. (2025). Toward a Folklore of the Left: Retracting the Strategic Models of Fiction from English Realism to Streaming Television. Cultural Critique, 127(1), 138–176.

Abstract  This article engages with the modern history of the "hammer model" of art and literature, which reconstructs the representational passage from reflection to action. This model is crucial for understanding the cynical portrayals of realistic action in contemporary art and literature. Marxist cultural theory generally understands these portrayals as indicative of a widespread acceptance of the governing logic of capital. This article argues that they also valorise "strategic cultures" that help individuals thrive in capitalism. This approach is particularly evident in streaming television, where fictional professionals, activists, and scientists tackle challenges in life and politics using strategic tools and trades endorsed by capitalism. Not only do these portrayals promote strategies that enable groups and individuals to manage difficulties related to capitalism for personal profit, but they also limit the imagination of radical alternatives. This article contends that streaming television acts as a Trojan horse for the strategic cultures of capital, underscoring the necessity for a different hammer model of art and literature.

 

Oveisy, F. [forthcoming]. Toward a leftist artificial intelligence for geopolitical analysis: Addressing conceptual and technical gaps in the development of radically equitable artificial agents. In C. El Morr, R. Gorman, E. Dolatabadi, & L. Seyed-Kalantari (Eds.), Equity and artificial intelligence: Possibilities for justice and liberation. Taylor & Francis.

Abstract  Efforts to make artificial intelligence (AI) more equitable often rely on technical de-biasing measures, data justice, or liberal governance frameworks that treat fairness as a set of universal metrics. This chapter challenges that paradigm by arguing that equitability must be learned—rather than enforced—during the in-processing phase of machine learning, during which models internalise their reasoning processes. Drawing from critical security studies, science and technology studies, and political and machine learning theories, it reviews four fairness paradigms and highlights their limitations in examining how machine learning architectures reproduce inequitable cultural logics inherited from statist, capitalist, and colonial epistemes. The chapter advocates for an alternative approach that treats AI training itself as a contested site of epistemic and infrastructural struggle. To illustrate this, it presents a fine-tuning project using an LLM with an advanced architecture, which enables the model to problematise its predictive logic during training. Fine-tuned on critical international relations theory, this model can interrogate the inequitable cultures it inherits, thus transforming not only what it predicts but also how it reasons about prediction. Instead of correcting for inequity as a deviation from neutrality, a radically equitable AI must likewise learn to challenge the very conditions that produce inequity. The chapter concludes that achieving radically equitable AI requires political and technical infrastructures that support counter-hegemonic training cultures, and that equity should be approached as a strategic practice of transforming the structural conditions underlying inequality.

 

Oveisy, F. (2022, December). The Philosophical Case for Strategic Thinking as a Democratic Necessity. In D. J. Smith (Ed.), Rethinking Democracy in Kurdistan [Special issue]. Philosophy, World, Democracy.

Abstract  Not enough attention is paid to Rojava’s regression to authoritarianism, and even less attention is paid to the conceptual deficits in Rojava’s anarcho-communist practice that misguide its strategists toward such an outcome. Despite the emphasis of Rojava’s theorists on ‘imagination,’ and the stress Rojava’s revolutionaries put on ‘action,’ proper strategic thought and imagination are absent from their repertoires. Betraying the teachings of Abdullah Öcalan, they have reverted to playing strategy on the terrain of the state and capital and, thus, ceding strategic mediation and creativity to the rules and powers of this undemocratic terrain. There is a dire need in Rojava and other leftist fronts to fuse strategic thinking and democratic practice. Contrary to the thought of philosophers such as Jacques Rancière, who have us believe in a necessary correlation between strategic and authoritarian politics, strategic thinking is a democratic necessity. Its absence is to blame not only for the authoritarian relapse in Rojava but also for the uncanny regressions of the ‘multitudinous,’ ‘post-organisational,’ and ‘non-hierarchical’ variety of contemporary praxis to dictatorial formations.

 

Policy Design

Oveisy, F. (2025, December 2). The third option: A Canada–EU–UK coalition for a balanced digital world order (Policy brief). International Policy Ideas Challenge, Global Affairs Canada & Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Abstract  This brief proposes a Canada–EU–UK digital alliance to shape the open-source deployment phase of AI markets through value-driven models, infrastructure, and data corridors, aiming to balance Sino-American rivalry for global digital dominance. It was prepared for Global Affairs Canada and presented at the ministry. 

 

Journalism

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!"

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.

 

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. At the moment, 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