No-Cal Sokal

[Adam Lou Stephanides]

On Sun, 2 Jun 1996 LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu wrote:

> 
> 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?

For one thing, the editors didn't preface the article with the statement
"this isn't very good, but we're printing it because it's by a scien-
tist," or a more polite version of the above (at least not that anyone's
mentioned; I haven't seen the issue myself, so correct me if I'm 
wrong).  So their current claims come across as woefully
unconvincing.  Moreover, if you believe them, that only means they 
were passing off bad articles on their readers.  For another thing, I 
thought scientists were supposed to have no special authority in science 
studies.  So why should an article by a scientist coming over to "our"
side get special consideration?

> 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.' [End of Bonnie's quote.]

I haven't read the article, but from what I understand, its problem was
not that it was "not seasoned in [its] use of academic discourse"
but that it was full of completely unsupported (and, as it 
turned out, unsupportable) assertions and leaps of logic.
 
> 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 list is to a paper (unpublished) that was prepared apparently in response to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.

I only skimmed the LF thing, but I believe it was b), though not necessarily
Marxist.
 
--Adam