Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 17:14:17 -0500
From: dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: Re: M-I: the Sokal-Ross debate


At 3:15 PM 11/4/96, George Yudice wrote:

>Proyect's endorsement of Rosen's invocation of "intellectual standards"
>clashes with his and several others's postings regarding the "Sokal
>Affair" on this list. A new subscriber to this list (since late
>September), I have benefitted from some of the discussions and have made
>good use of essays referred to in linked web pages, such as the _Left
>Business Observer_.

Glad you liked them, even if they were written by a resentment-drunk sloppy
thinker.

>How
>else can one characterize someone who openly admits that he hasn't read
>Aronowitz's books but nevertheless _knows_, on the reading of another
>person, that they are "nonsense":

I don't have time to read everything on earth. I've read large bits of
Aronowitz & DeFazio's book on work and thought it full of nonsense. I've
seen Aronowitz speak many times and I've heard what I thought to be
nonsense. I've known Bob Fitch for years, have tremendous respect for his
mind and opinion, and I attach great weight to his opinion that Aronowitz'
writing on science is nonsense.

>Others have already commented on the ad hominem statements about Andrew
>Ross to which Proyect has admitted, attempting to dissociate these
>comments, disingenuously in my opinion, from homophobia. (By the way,
>for accuracy's sake, Ross was not wearing a "fluffy white shirt" but a
>plain one. The justification put forth by one correspondent that this
>was a reference to a Seinfeld episode does not change the "objective
>conditions"). It might also be added that references to Stanley
>Aronowitz's weight in a discussion that is presumably about
>"intellectual standards" reveal a need on the part of Proyect, Henwood
>and Luzietti to bolster with calumny statements that are otherwise
>lacking in substance.

Please don't associate me with Lou's remarks on Andrew Ross's appearance
were pretty ugly and totally irrelevant. Actually I thought he looked sort
of cool. Fitch's title ("Stanley Aronowitz is Our Big Fat Idiot") is
admittedly in bad taste, but journalists have notoriously low standards.

Nor did I ever say that pomos in general were politically inactive. I
object to the political meaning of the theoretical constellation we're all
calling postmodernism, but AR's work on fashion & the textile industry is
highly political. And I don't doubt that plenty of pomos organize,
demonstrate, volunteer, agitate, whatever, for entirely worthy causes. I
think it's a bad theory for a general approach to making revolution, if we
can still say that. It's too focused on the worlds of consumption and
signification rather than ownership and production, and on Foucauldian
dispersed practices of resistance rather than sustained organization. Too
many cultural theorists seem to accept the George Gilder's and Wired's
cybertopia as representative of the actual state of capitalist production
today, only with a negative sign in front of it.

Aronowitz' Newsday piece in honor of Teamster hack Barry Feinstein was a
disgrace, however.

ST's falling for Sokal's paper revealed a tremendous weakness. The critique
of science is too important to be carried on with so little knowledge of
actual science. Ross seemed unable to conceive of any genetics with benign
rather than dastardly intent. Genetic research is too important to be left
to geneticists alone - even on very mainstream agency theoretic reasons.
But the critique of genetics requires you know something about genetics.

>And that
>examination cannot dispense with language, discourse, and image.

Whoever said it could? The Marxian tradition is full of writing on language
and culture. In the U.S., very orthodox Communists fought for African
Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, when it was very unfashionable. Marxists
have long analyzed and fought colonialism. Me, I think the study of
transsexuality is a fine thing, as is transsexuality. Both sides in this
debate have descended into caricature. Yeah, there's some way in which
Sokal's triumph is a "win" for a side, but it's not very helpful to harp on
it. It's not like there isn't serious work to be done on the culture and
politics of science.

>speak of the political and economic loss to which the Zuni are
>susceptible should their land claims lose legitimacy. Consequently, to
>make an assessment of the Zuni situation one has to go further than the
>trusting pursuit of truth. Sokal cannot possibly be naive about such
>things, having himself become adept in the manipulation of trust.

The claims on Zuni land have nothing to do with their creation myth.
Israelis have used creation myths to sustain their appropriations and
brutalities; no one who fought for Palestinian claims ever argued from
earth-birth. The Zuni claims about their origin are wrong, but their land
claims are right. Why can't we say that?


Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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