Sokal et al

[Stefan Schuber]

To Bill and Monte,

Thanks for your posts regarding Sokal, pomo pseudoscience, and 
antipathies.

I started to draft a post yesterday afternoon but had to abandon it. I'm 
group editor for several technical trade magazines in the pharmaceutical 
industry, and I know a lot of the folks who discover, develop, and 
manufacture pharmaceuticals -- and I know these folks don't practice pomo 
pseudoscience and are less interested in quantum fields than organic 
synthesis. The latter takes place according to pretty straightforward 
empirical rules that really don't depend on countertotalizing flights of 
fancy or pseudo(post?)Freudian authoritarianism.

Where I get hot under the collar is the postDerridean assumption that if 
you can write it, then in some way not only is it as real as anything 
else, but also that writing preempts and even replaces empirical 
demonstrations. I have come to this conclusion after reading Derrida in 
English on "the gift of death." I usually read him in French, but in 
translation I began to suspect that some serious uncoupling is happening. 
Recently a Japanese friend, an academic with a degree from a French 
University, told me that she's refusing any further assignments to 
translate Derrida because in Japanese it's pure nonsense.

I'll check out the metaphor/metonomy site and just leave with the thought 
that one is perfectly correct in asking Lenin's question about the 
politics of building the bridge ("Who? Whom?"), but the actual 
construction is best left to engineers.

ss