Sokal article

HDCS6 who-is-at jetson.uh.edu
Thu, 23 May 1996 14:05:59 -0500 (CDT)

I'm sure some people have been following the extraordinary story
of the famous NYU physicist (Sokal) who published an article in a
famous theoretical journal (for some reason the name _Cultural Texts_
keeps coming to me, I'm sorry if I have the wrong name...I don't read
it regularly) on the relationship between quantum mechanics and
post modern thought, and then on the day it was published released
a statement saying the whole thing was a hoax, that the article was
nonsense, and that this proved the intellectually bankrupt nature of
the whole post modern movement. Stanley Fish then wrote a long
opinion piece in the New York Times saying that Sokal had acted
unethically by knowingly submitting a false article to a reputable
journal. sokal and his compatriots have been crowing that Stanley
Fish is a day late and a dollar short, because if the journal published
the article it can't really be reputable. A real inside the ivory
tower whoop dee doo. What's amazing to me is that this whole episode
does represent an important watershed moment in academics, if we are
able to grasp hold of it, but not for the reason Sokal claims. the
article really does seem to be nonsense. A letter to the New York
Times today, and some of the excerpts I have read from the article,
suggest that it should not have been published. I think a number of
people on this network, for instance, could have caught it with a
really good, critical reading. So how did it get past the editors
of such a good journal. There is only one term that fits this
particular situation, coined by Stanley Aronowitz, (and I deeply
apologize if this offends anybody...there is no other way to get the
meaning)...it is "star-fucking". Sokal's article did not get the
critical reading it should have gotten because he is a famous
physicist, because he is a star, and you can't question the ideas of such
a great star. We have developed a tendency in academics to worship
individuals and not ideas (that are necessarily historically based
and the result of the collective). Stanley Fish, who I have great
respect for, came very close to saying this in his Times article,
but just couldn't bring himself to do it, even to protect the ideas
that are so important to him (is it more important to protect your
culture than to protect what you love? an interesting twist on the
Kohlberg-Gilligna debate). Sokal, of course, has an implicit
understanding I'm sure of the way things work in academics, and he
knew he'd get published on his name, so he was being quite a bit more
of a jerk than people are giving him credit for. But, like I said,
it opens the door to a really important debate about how academics
conduct the busines and the art of academics. Anybody have any other
takes on this whole thing?

Michael Glassman
University of Houston