pynchon-l-digest V1 #37

[Tom Maddox]

Regarding the Sokal discussion:

As the editors of _Social Text_ and Stanley Fish would hope, many of these
discussions are concerned with the vexed and vexing question of whether
laws of nature exist independently of our social construction of them.
However, I find this and similar questions almost entirely beside the
point, which is:  Sokal sent in an article containing a remarkable amount
of nonsense, and the editors published it.  To put it another way, they
demonstrated that they have no way of distinguishing nonsense from sense.
To put it still another way, the incident shows that one cannot effectively
parody academic postmodern discourse, for any parody can be regarded as a
serious instance of the thing itself.

Tom