Social Trust

[MASCARO at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU]

Eyal notes:

>Stanley Fish (who edits Duke Journals where Social Text is published) has 
>published a neat, familiar debunking of the Sokal manoeuvre.  If you want 
>I can post it here, or send it to you individually.  Basically, he says 
>that sociologists of science have always debated the relative merits of 
>scientific theory, that the issue is not whether there is a "real" world 
>out there but how we understand it, and that it is Sokal who violates the 
>trust of an academic community which is necessary to inquiry in his own 
>field.  


Regarding this issue of trust, I had a course in Art History way back in college 
taught by a die-hard representationalist who despised abstract art.  One day in 
lecture, he flashed several slides in a Pollockian abstract-expressionist mode, and 
elicited a class discussion on these slides.  About 10 minutes into the discusssion he 
let's out this obnoxious chortle and declares that these aren't--real--painting, but 
merely photographs of his palette taken from odd angles!!!! Ah ha! he concludes, 
abstract art is moronic and fit only for the appreciation of morons, Q.E.D.

I always hated this guy.  I've never forgotten the malice w/ with he foisted his little 
deception, nor ever figured out the pleasure such folks--I guess Sokal is one--get by 
violating trust this way.  I'm just glad that, for whatever reason, I was silent during 
the discussion. And after class I told him I had recognized right away that these 
weren't really paintings (I hadn't, though I recall some having weird sense that the 
guy was up to something and so kept quiet).  He didn't believe me.

john m