“‘The compact represents a total violation of academic freedom, shared governance and an open democracy,’ [AAUP-Penn president Jessa Lingel] wrote. “So now we'll get to see what kind of university we have—one that stands up to tyranny or one that capitulates.” www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Your Excellencies, Your Worships, Your Honors, and Citizens, the Emperor and Autocrat of All the States, Ruler of Washington and Mar-o-Logo, the Chairman of Culture and Education, is cutting the beards!

creating yet another signal chat as a form of torture

Wait, is cheering for St Pauli illegal in the US? Or can get you fired? … asking for a friend.

Best literature on land, labor, money— as things that don’t have value (but can be sold, have a price). What you got?

AI chat bot resembles Plato's dialogues. Whatever you (Socrates) ask, it spits out the affirmation of whatever presupposition you smuggled in and ends with a QED, a definitive proof of what you always already knew.

I always find it strange when people refer to countries with gendered pronouns. Russian is she/her; England is she/her. Any they/them countries out there?

Signing my email up to "Christian Mingle" platform is, of course, a good prank. But whom did I piss off that much to warrant the punishment?

As an immigrant, there is nothing more that I hate than some immigrants--more established, more "white", more safe--turn on other immigrants.

My book finally has a title: Novalis, Spinoza, and the Limits of Romantic Materialism, and it is now officially in production with Northwestern UP.

getting invited to speak at a frat house because "a number of brothers of the fraternity" found my classes "nothing short of inspiring" -- was definitely not on my bingo card for this year

Is anyone translating this?

Tronti identifies a difference between capitalist mode of production and the emergence of "capitalist society" proper (applying only to the post-WWII). Has anyone done further work on this differentiation between "capitalist mode of production" vs "capitalist society"?

straight to the gulag

when you start naming your drafts not by month-day, but by the current year only...

"In Spinoza, it is the case that things only exist as formed, and that the whole problem is a problem of form. Unity is simply unviable, amounting to an illusion; it is not itself that lives, but rather a plurality of forms grappling with others and which can only be destroyed." (Zourabichvili)

Finally getting to Zourabichvili's "Spinoza's Paradoxical Conservatism", and it's absolutely great. It poses the question of the limits of radical change without death or ruin, both on the level of individual and society. The very question my book on Spinoza and Novalis asks, but Z does it better.

As Spring semester is wrapping up, this is what my Fall semesters looks like:

It’s crazy to realize that capitalism will come to an end - in one form or another - within our lifetime.

The coalition delivered a petition that included calls for the university to fill gaps amid federal funding cuts; uphold diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; and stand up for LGBTQ+ members of the Penn community.

It used to be when I got academia_edu notifications, I thought: 'How nice, somebody is interested in my research'. Nowadays, it's: 'What in the world did I do and what trolls are after me now'. Age of paranoia.

When COVID started, I taught Lucretius on the plague of Athens; after Jan 6th, I taught the Eighteenth Brumaire. I am currently teaching Lacan's Seminar II (on Ego and Technique) and Chernyshevsky's What is to Be Done?. Make it make sense.

A young man in a cafe next to me is reading Hesse. How are like this possible in the 21st century?

For if, just like the Bourgeois, the non-Master, the bourgeois Intellectual is essentially peaceful and does not fight, he differs from the Bourgeois in that he does not work either. (Kojeve)

Philly, come out to 2000 Market right now and say it loud: hands off our healthcare, hands off our research, hands off our jobs!

Timoshenko (in Ivan the Terrible) as Foucault

"For reality, when it includes human beings, is no longer just that which it is, but also everything that is missing in it, everything that it must still become." (Garaudy)

Coming to love the Eagles seems to be the one clear objective of Philly public schools-- featuring eagles dress code, eagles cupcakes, worksheets, presents-- because I do not get what else my 6yo is doing there.

Tried to explain to the kiddos how "literature" works, the formalist edition

Climate catastrophe, genocide, inflation. The Democratic Party:

Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future,” like Chernyshevsky’s “What is To Be Done?”, is a very bad novel. But one everybody has to read.

Holiday season. Kid: When am I getting my presents? Me: Have you been good this year? Kid: Yes! Me: Virtue is its own reward.

I used to run all my seminars on Slack: hate emails, messages are much easier, I post thing in real-time, allows for class-discussions, memes etc. Any alternatives? WhatsApp chat? Anybody has recs?

My Emotional Support Dead Famous Guy does in fact say a lot about me —

How many people in the world have the name "Siarhei Uladzimiravich Biareishyk"? That's my name. I kid you not, a guy WITH THE EXACT SAME NAME (including patronymic) is a head of a penal colony in Belarus, and was just sanctioned by the EU.

Nobody: Anti-Christ: "Christ came before me. I come second. But what, in order of time, appears later is, in its essence, the first. I come last, at the end of history, and for [that very reason I am the] final savior of the world." (Solov'ev)

When billionaires intersect, it's literally the ONE TIME I argue we should get rid of ALL NUANCE.

New conspiracy theory: RFK's idea of "getting fluoride out of water" is just a ploy to please the giant DENTIST LOBBY. I mean, ask any Soviet-sphere (no fluoride) immigrant about their dentist bills...

Post the LAST SENTENCE of your last book/article. Re: Spinoza/materialism after Marx: "any strict differentiation between materialism and idealism should be called into question; yet, the materialist and idealist tendencies necessitate all the more meticulous differentiation and demarcation."

That's it, it's decided: I'm starting my seminar on structuralism with reading Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" Sorry not sorry.

Honestly surprised by the 60% budget on faculty number. Seeing the tuition and our salaries, I would have thought it would be somewhere closer to 30%.

Who are the top 5 most important philosophers to you AT THIS VERY MOMENT? Mine: 1.) Althusser 2.) Ilyenkov 3.) Spinoza 4.) Marx 5.) Novalis

I usually teach one "crazy" and one "normal" class per semester. Every time I teach a new "crazy" class, I am nervous. This time, it is a class on the history of structure vs form viz conceptions of the subject (mostly) in 20th century.

According to Hegel, freedom consists in the understanding of necessity; according to Spinoza - in the activity according to understood necessity, in a real, bodily act. In this sense, dialectico-materialist solution to the problem is much closer to Spinoza's, rather than the hegelian one. Ilyenkov

Anthropocene vs. Capitalocene

Academics in their forties

I think this administration is going to do a lot of damage, mainly via the courts and repressive apparatuses. But the more incompetents Trump nominates to the cabinet, the more I think Republicans are overreaching, getting high on their own supply about the alleged "mandate."

Whole reason we invented Marx was so we didn't have to understand hegel