Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 19:47:20 +0100
From: hariette-AT-easynet.co.uk (hariette spierings)
Subject: Re: Current Lingua Franca


>    Louis is right about the interest of the follow-up on Sokal in the
>current Lingua Franca. Of particular (and I think key) interest is the
>response by Franco Moretti, professor of comparative literature at
>Columbia. The whole is important, but one paragraph gives the core:
>
>    [Why did they print it?] Because, the editors say, "[we] concluded
>that this article was the ernest attempt by a professional scientist
>to seek some kind of affirmation from postmodern philosophy for
>developments in his field." In plainer words: We publish Sokal not
>because he is interesting, but because he says *we* are. This is a
>wonderful explanation, with a great hidden premise--that people in
>the humanities have nothing to learn from the scientist. He may
>be exihibited as a curious convert to theory, but we don't have to
>take him seriously. The *Social Text* board read and reread the
>article, and didn't understand a thing--yet they didn't care,
>because at bottom they believe that physics has nothing to teach
>them. In the *Social Text* cosmology, science is a socially
>aggressive but intellectually weak enterprise that seeks "affirmation"
>from postmodern philosophy. This is why they didn't check Sokal's
>claims out: Whether the physics made sense or not made no difference,
>because its value had to be in the philosophy anyway. So why
>bother?
>
>    Incidentally--if one goes back and reads in the lives and
>activities of the early bolsheviks, one finds that one broadly
>shared element among them was an absolutely insatiable appetite
>for knowledge--in *EVERYTHING*, not just in economics and politics
>and related (e.g. philosophy) topics. The same is true, of course,
>of both Marx and Engels--and over and over again they pay respect
>for that element in earlier thinkers.
>
>    Carrol
>


Yes, the Marxist have an isatiable appetite for knowledge - real knowledge,
that is.  Gobbledigook certainly does not come into that category!


Adolfo Olaechea



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---