No-Cal Sokal

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Bonnie comments:
"This is another bothersome argument.  Sokal is no idiot.  Sure, he used
the right jargon--and he used it in ways validated by the very arguments
he sought to emulate, er, parody.  He reiterated arguments already in
play within scholarly journals devoted to exploring power dynamics in
academe (in this case, "science wars").  So the editors say:  "well, it
wasn't very good, but it did speak to the issues under consideration--and
that, from the sci community").  How come this disturbs as inauthentic?
Part of what makes journals like those devoted to cultural studies so
interesting is their accessability--in terms of those scholars longing to
contribute but perhaps not seasoned in their use of academic discourse
(believe me, I can relate here).
 
urgh.'


I sat down to actually read the article in question, and one can see how folks
might easily have been misled.  I wonder in fact if anyone would have noticed it
was a joke unless Sokal had come out!  As NEWSWEEK indicated, the earlier part
of the article, covering some basic stuff of Quantum Physics, accords with
what I--in my thoroughly amateurish and humanities-grounded way--think I know
about the topic.  (And it's less abstruse and wiggy than the best-selling
BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME!)  There are a few little hints that here and there
that suggest--in hindsight--that this was not meant to be taken seriously,
among them a footnote reference to Althusser's observation that Lacan gave
Freud a scientific grounding at last--which I think implies something about
Soka'
Sokal's attitude toward Freud.  I also hope that if I were an editor, I might
have at least raised my eyebrows at a citations list of more than 200 works
for a 15-page article (single-column, large type!).

But as I said before, this all seems like a lot of effort to go to in order to
"prove" a rather mundane point.  One especially-irksome reference in Sokal's
list is to a paper (unpublished) that was prepared apparently in response to
an organization issue at a Nicaraguan university, where Sokal taught during 
 the Sandanista years.  I haven't read his self-defense in LINGUA FRANCA, but
wonder if there or anywhere else, he explains his own political agenda.  I
can imagine a few:
	a)_ "disinterested and neutral," just teaching by chance while the
		Sandanistas were in;
	b) pro-Sandanista, but anti-postmodern or even traditional straight-line
		Marxist, wanting to validate "scientific" knowledge of the
		base-superstructure and dialectical class relationships;
	c) closet conservative, with a distinct antirevolutionary agenda;
	d) other.

Of course, once George Will and NEWSWEEK and everyone else has a had a shot at
this, it will be only another version of the academic "urban legends" that
so often pass for "
proof" in the wars over political correctness and the like.

Anyway, I'm sure Pynchon would be amused by the whole thing, from all sides!

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)