Date: Sat, 18 May 1996 11:23:24 -0400 (EDT) From: Santiago Colas <scolas-AT-umich.edu> Subject: Re: Sokal Parody Well, I think that it speaks very poorly for the editorial board of social text, many of whom are my friends. I think Sokal has exposed a big problem among humanities scholars aiming at some kind of comprehensive inter- or trans-disciplinarity: it's that they don't bother to get know the "other" field or discipline from the inside out. As far as I'm concerned, such interdisciplinary borrowing amounts to a kind of fetishism of the commodity, where the the product of a very specific process of knowledge production from another discipline is consumed without regard for its conditions of production. At any rate, I'm pleased about this exposure if it helps force the worthy project of cultural studies to get serious about its means and methods. But, on another issue, I think Sokal is guilty of the very thing he accuses these humanities folks of: i.e. trashing all over a discipline without really knowing it. His comments, in Lingua Franca, with respect to epistemological relativism, on Lacan, Derrida and others are just wrong and suggest the very common and understandable (but not finally excusable for an intellectual and a scholar) reticence people experience when they encounter the very unfamiliar language of such theorists. But I realy don't believe that Sokal has read them, or if he has, he hasn't bothered to check his interpretation with a "specialist" in those fields (the same crime he accuses Andrew Ross et al of: they didn't check the physics in his article with a real physicist). I'm all for rigor, but Sokal should have applied the same standard to his own enterprise. Santiago ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Santiago Colas e-mail: scolas-AT-umich.edu Asst. Professor phone: (313) 763-4352 Latin American and Comparative Literature fax: (313) 764-8163 University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1275 USA On Sat, 18 May 1996 squigle-AT-panix.com wrote: > No doubt many members of this list in the U.S. saw the article on the front > page of today's _NYTimes_ concerning the article published in _Social Text_ > by Alan Sokal. (If there's interest, I could post the article to the > entire list. It is also available through the NYTimes' website.) > > For those not familiar with this "event", Sokal is a physicist at NYU who > identifies with the Left but is critical of what he considers the obscurity > and "epistemic relativism" of poststructuralist theory and cultural > criticism. So, rather than debate the issue, Sokal wrote "Transgressing > the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" - > a parody of "deconstructive criticism" - and submitted it to _Social Text_ > for publication. It appeared in a special issue devoted to "Science Wars". > After Sokal's article was published in _Social Text_, he exposed the scam > in _Lingua Franca_. > > Now there are a number of issues here. I mention only two of the most > obvious. How could such an article get through the "peer review process" > and the scrutiny of the editorial board at _Social Text_? To what extent > does this signal a legitimate problem in the production and reception of > contemporary criticism and theory? > > > tq > > > ----------------------------------- > T. R. Quigley > School of the Visual Arts > 25 E. 10th Street > Apartment 11B > New York, NY 10003 > 212 677 5767 > squigle-AT-panix.com > ---------------------------------- > > > ------------------
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