Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 20:22:04 -0500
Subject: Re: M-I: Alan Sokal's book party
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)



On Mon, 10 Nov 1997 09:43:01 -0500 Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
writes:
>I had an enjoyable time yesterday at Alan Sokal's home celebrating the
>publication of "Intllectual Impostors", co-written with a Belgian
>physicist. It is a broadside directed at all of the French 
>postmodernists
>who write really stupid things about science. The gosh-darned thing is
>written in French, so it won't be of much use to me, but it should be
>translated into English before long--I will keep you all posted.
>
>I asked Alan about those bums Deleuze and Guattari, who he had a 
>chapter
>on. He got very excited and started hopping up and down. He translated 
>a
>section of their prose for me that he subjected to a withering 
>critique.
>Although my brain was a little foggy from all the champagne I had 
>imbibed,
>I am quite sure that the D&G passage said: "The hypotenuse of 
>sensuality
>reveals itself in the Heisenberg Principle, mediated by overdetermined
>rhizomes." Or something like that.
>[.....]


>His new book has caused a furor in France, which was reported on the 
>front
>page of Nouvelle Observatore. Apparently Luz Irrigary is especially
>pissed-off and considers the book a racial attack on the French. She
>sniffed, "Why didn't he write about the Italians or the Germans." I 
>guess
>everybody but her knows the answer to this. It has been the French who 
>have
>inflicted this plague of bad prose and shoddy ideas upon the rest of 
>the
>world, along with adoration of Jerry Lewis.
>
Unfortunately, Louis P is quite correct about the apparent degeneration
of
French thought.  When one considers the writings of such intellectuals
as Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari and the rest of France's postmodernists,
poststructuralists and post-whatevers one can only be saddened by
what has happened in the land of Descartes, and of Voltaire, Rousseau,
and Diderot.  All this seems to be accompanied by an increase in
French insularity and a vociferous anti-Marxism (thirty years ago French
intellectuals had a reputation for being vociferous Marxists but they
have
since swung in the opposite direction).  People on this list might want
to
take a look at this month's issue of *Lingua Franca.*  In the article
"Chunnel Vision" Adam Shatz points out that in France not a single
publishing house has been willing to publish Eric Hobsbawn's book
*The Age of Extremes* despite its critical and commercial success around
the world.  

			James F.


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