Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 22:50:06 -0500 (CDT)
From: Brian Evenson <evenson-AT-osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu>
Subject: RE: Sokal replies


> 	Second, I find "Sokal's reply" to totally evade the problem by 
> appealing to Swift.  Swift wasn't writing parody within the context of 
> late 20th century American university discourse.  Ethics is contextual
> , and such an appeal is evasive.  The point others have made still, in 
> my opinion sticks: the parody made use of a certain trust in the value 
> of statements within a professional and institutional context.  Social 
> text, by publishing the work of a physicist was attempting to extend a 
> discourse beyond the boundaries of its usual practitioners, and this 
> meant an even greater act of faith in the person submitting.  Sokal 
> violated that trust, even as the editors of Social Text, if what Sokal 
> writes is accurate, must be held accountable for not providing 
> _critical_ scholarly review and, seemingly, publishing the article 
> largely on the basis of Sokal's professional status as a scientist and 
> as a professor.  It seems to me that this latter act, by Social Text, 
> does, indeed, speak of a closed community where "trendy" arguments are 
> generated; but this addresses an institutional problem which 
> Sokal is part of, and not outside of (in fact, which he accepted and 
> used in getting published). (But this problem has been addressed many 
> times on this List already.)

I agree.  In addition, I would add that Swift has markers in his
texts that allowed a large percentage the audience at the time to realize
the satiric intent.  Sokal, however, doesn't provide the same sort of
markers--it feels satiric only if you know in advance it is satiric;
otherwise it feels like a scientist testing out critical theory.  I doubt 
too that even for scientists you have to be in on the joke in advance.

Probably a more apt comparison is Defoe's _Shortest Way With the
Dissenters_ which walks a much more ambiguous line that Swift and can much
more easily be read as if it were serious.  But, tellingly, that piece got
everybody on both sides of the issue angry and got Defoe exacrated put in
prison.


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