Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 22:41:48 -0500 (CDT) From: Dennis Grammenos <dgrammen-AT-prairienet.org> Subject: M-I: Alan Sokal Joined the Labor Party (fwd) =======---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 22:52:43 -0400 From: Charlie Post <CPost45466-AT-AOL.COM> To: SLDRTY-L-AT-LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Subject: Alan Sokal Joined the Labor Party Comrades, Today I received a mailing from my (New York Higher Education) Chapter of the Labor Party. Included was a recently revised list of members. Included among the new members was Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University. For those who either didn't know or have forgotten (or who had better things to worry about), Sokal was the author of the brilliant hoax submitted to the notorious post-modernist journal SOCIAL TEXT. The article, which argued that gravity was a "social construction" (don't try this near empty elevator shafts), was written in typically obscure po-mo jargon and argued the "right line" (science is just one of many "socially constructed" ways of looking at the world and has no "privileged" claim to objectivity, approximation to reality, etc.) Lo and behold, the article was accepted by the editors of SOCIAL TEXT (Aronowitz, Ross, et al.) A few weeks later, Sokal announced that the article was total nonsense and that he had submitted it to expose SOCIAL TEXT and the post-modernists' ignorance and hostility to science, which Sokal believes is central to any emancipatory politics. Many on the left, including some members and friends of Solidarity, argued that whatever the validity of Sokal's attack on SOCIAL TEXT, that it was not clear whether his was a "progressive" critique. Some have compared it the right-wing attack on "political correctness" and multicultural education in the early 1990s. Clearly, Sokal is and was a pro-working class radical, whose attck on the post-modernist fraud should be welcomed by the rest of us pro-working class radicals. Later--CP =================== --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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