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Kenneth Novis

@saditious.bsky.social

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · Aug 4

There's a new website for the Boycott Watkins campaign: www.boycottwatkins.com (Watkins is the company that owns Zer0 and Repeater books, as well as several other imprints).

If you support BDS, please also add your name to the list at the bottom of the page!

Boycott Watkins

www.boycottwatkins.com

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 19h

When I first heard him present this research, my initial response was 'well of course!' I'd always been taught that GG was sheer fabrication, comparable to Nietzsche's Will to Power. But there are many Weil scholars who still lean on GG, despite its major issues.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 19h

A podcast episode featuring Benjamin Braude is now available, laying out his argument that Simone Weil *should not* be seen as the author of Gravity and Grace, and that this book should be seen as a work of forgery and fraud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnaA...

Benjamin Braude, "Who Wrote Simone Weil's Books?," March 5, 2025

YouTube video by Boston College Ctr for Christian-Jewish Learning

www.youtube.com

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 1d

“The question of Spinoza’s atheism is singularly lacking in interest insofar as it depends on arbitrary definitions of theism and atheism. The question can only be posed in relation to what most people call “God” from a religious viewpoint”. - Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 1d

It looks like the schedule for the Gröningen Spinoza Fest has now been finalised - I look forward to meeting all the other Spinozists there!

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 1d

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino comes to mind

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 2d

The brief explanation of my research that my college asked me to write has now been published in the annual St Hugh's Chronicle:
online.fliphtml5.com/uwbnc/dqef/#...

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 2d

The brief explanation of my research that my college asked me to write has now been published in the annual St Hugh's Chronicle: lnkd.in/eMynfK3r

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 5d

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 5d

From a broader perspective, all forms of consumer agency could do with being subsumed under political agency. When a company does something outrageously immoral, strikes and boycotts are a better device than the usual avenues of consumer complaint.

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Reposted by Kenneth Novis

Caleb Ward @calebw.bsky.social · 5d

US-style neoliberalism interpellates everyone as a customer, which means consumer agency replaces any other form of political agency.

👇Here I’m being congratulated for successfully booking a passport appointment. Like, no need for that. Literally just exercising my rights here.

Email from US Visa Scheduling

Appointment Confirmation

Congratulations, you have successfully scheduled an appointment. Your appointment details are below.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 6d

Getting set up back in Oxford

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 6d

At a local mop fair with my little sister

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 8d

Diderot's a hard one to pin down. He's definitely a materialist. But I've corresponded a little with Michael Della Rocca about him, since in the Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature §11 Diderot seems to even propound the parmenidean ascent.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 8d

Great to see Diderot getting some attention! One of my favourite philosophers of all time.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 9d

I miss getting to read Marxism and critical theory, all of my reading time now gets eaten up with scholarly commentaries on Spinoza, Bayle and other early modern philosophers

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 9d

Then again, if any university is going to make people feel alienated, it’s Oxford. No other university puts as much time and energy into maintaining and propagating an image of itself that is false to so great an extent.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 9d

People describe the amazing times they had at this university. Admittedly a lot of that I’ve chosen to avoid because it’s unbearably pretentious. But I still feel like something’s just passed me by.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 9d

I know we always talk about how all-consuming academia is, but I feel regret over the fact that I’m about to enter potentially the last year of my PhD at Oxford with relatively little personally to show for it. It’ll have been three years of reading and writing, and almost nothing else.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 11d

It's especially frustrating given that, for lots of us, the Confirmation deadline is in late October. This means that anyone (like me) who spent the summer ironing out a 5,000 word essay for the interview now has to rewrite the piece with another 3,000 words of length in mind.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 11d

Loving the world of endlessly shifting expectations that is modern academia. To be accepted into the final year of the Philosophy DPhil at Oxford, you used to have to submit a 5,000 word essay for the Confirmation interview. This year, without telling anyone beforehand, they've changed it to 8,000.

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 12d

Steve Nadler's latest book on Spinoza has now been officially announced on the Princeton University Press website. I'm admittedly biased towards it already, as I do think Spinoza was an atheist. But it'll be interesting to see how he deals with this at book-length press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Spinoza, Atheist

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Steven Nadler, a fascinating historical and philosophical narrative that unravels the mystery of whether Spinoza was an atheist

press.princeton.edu

Reposted by Kenneth Novis

Grace Blakeley @graceblakeley.substack.com · 15d

"It’s absolutely hilarious that a nominally ‘libertarian’ government is being bailed out by the largest and most powerful state in the world.

It just goes to show – capitalism cannot survive without the state."
open.substack.com/pub/gracebla...

What I read this week

Another 'libertarian' government needs a bailout, the UK needs to deal with its stagflation problem, and Vanuatu needs to stop itself from sinking.

open.substack.com

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Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 18d

Another conference paper acceptance: I'll be presenting the second half of one of my dissertation chapters, on Spinoza and Montesquieu, at Cambridge University's Early Modern Workshop.

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 18d

Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism

Kenneth Novis @saditious.bsky.social · 18d

"by attributing to [Spinoza] a number of theses which he would surely never have acknowledged, though they did not actually contradict him. But to be a heretical Spinozist is almost orthodox Spinozism, if Spinozism can be said to be one of the greatest lessons in heresy that the world has seen"

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