File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-06-08.010, message 117


Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 17:39:01 -0400
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: SERIOUS SOKAL/Ross, Aronowitz, and postmarxism...


Let me reconstruct this a little...

First, Doug Henwood wrote:
>"Well, to start with, if they can't smell bullshit, or pass along a
>submitted paper to a physicist with an appropriately trained nose, then
>maybe it's because their noses have lost all sensitivity to the stuff,
>being so deeply immersed in it."

Then Jeff Johnson responded:
>This is exactly Keith's point.  That's a rhetorical answer, not a substantive
>one.  I myself can't agree with the post-modernists, of which I assume
>Ross and Aronowitz are a part.  But I myself am not particularly familiar
with their
>particular views, and would like to see a bit more substantive debate of their
>positions.

To which Doug responded:
>Gee perhaps I can make it clearer. The editors of Social Text profess to
>know something about science, or they wouldn't have had a special issue on
>Science Wars, right? So they get a paper from a scientist that turns out to
>be absolute nonsense, that anyone with a minimum degree of scientific
>literacy could have spotted in a minute. In the course of a year of
>editorial deliberations, the editors never noticed this simple fact, nor
>did they think science an important enough intellectual pursuit to bother
>vetting the paper with someone who actually knew the physics, rather than
>just assuming a cocky pomo 'tude. This seems to me highly substantive -
>conclusive proof that the editors of Social Text hadn't the slightest idea
>what they or their contributors were talking about, and that when caught,
>Stanley A's reaction was to call Sokal "ill-read" and "half-educated"! In
>demotic English we call that bullshit.

Actually, I agree with what Doug has to say; I can't imagine how anyone
could (or would want to) try to defend Ross and/or Aronowitz's failure to
check Sokal's science with a person (scientist or not) capable of submitting
it to a rigorous appraisal.  But what I really wanted to know, and have only
partial seen (in the post that Lisa Rogers sent entitiled "forwarded
mail...") is 1) why everyone seems to take Ross and Aronowitz as being so
representative of postmodern/postmarxist theory?  What about all of the
others, from Jameson to Baudrillard?  I think that this large field is much
more nuanced and complex than that, as anyone in a humanities dept. (or who
reads as much as everyone on this list seems to) would know.  Personally, I
have little to do with Baudraillard, as he typifies alot of what I see as
the dangerous vein of postmodern/postmarxism, but Jameson and some of the
others are quite different and have something to offer (IMHO).  I'm not sure
if this wide heterogeneity in the field of postmodern/postmarxist theory is
not addressed because of lack of awareness, or just stereotyping, which is
why I posed the question.  Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.  2) also, in a
related question (or rather, the extension of the first), what critique
would those of you who seem to be against postmodernism/postmarxism in
general.  Lisa gave her answer to the second, I think, in the post that I
mentioned before.  And I agree with most of what she said. 

In fact, one of the funniest things in Sokal's article, for me, was the part
where he offered to let anyone who thought that physical laws were ONLY
construction to come and test that from his apartment window.  

I guess what I'm reacting to is the occasional (and surprising) blanket
comments such as that people in humanities depts. "should be ashamed to be
there" (as Rahul Mahajan said to Santiago Colas) or that all humanities
depts. are governed by some postmodern tyranny.  The first such comment
doesn't deserve a reply, but the second does.  The evidence for this claim
usually tends to be "well, in my dept, some people are persecuted..." or
"where my friend teaches..."--that is, experiential and not based on any
studies, experiments, and so on.  These sort of arguments are hard to
refute, of course, because it is quite possible that these people are in
such a situation and I would have no real desire to try to prove or disprove
that.  The claim that they then make, however, is different.  Just because
one person (or maybe one person and some of their friends) suffers at the
hands of dogmatic postmodern/postmarxist scholars, it does not necessarily
follow that all depts., or even the majority of depts., are run by such
people.  Resorting to my experience (the 5 depts where I've studied/taugh,
in 2 different institutions), I can testify that is not the case.  

At any rate, thanks for the ongoing debate. 

Keith

   
 
____________________________________________________________________
Keith Alan Sprouse				e-mail:  kas3f-AT-virginia.edu
Dept. of French Language and Literatures		office:  804.924.4626
University of Virginia				home:  804.971.9824
Charlottesville, VA 22903			fax:  804.924.7157



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