File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 156


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
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