I do think, though, that their editorial collective should have
consulted somebody knowledgeable in physics and friendly to
the journal's general viewpoint, and may have failed to do so
in part because of both a condescending attitude to a mere
physicist (these invidious outgroup valuations work both ways
I'm afraid) as critical amateur and because they were looking
for a reasonably well-known physicist as a Latourian 'ally'.
I can imagine publishing something I thought was highly deviant
from usual academic standards in a field as a sort of 'document'
(i.e. as much data as analysis), but if it was otherwise in
traditional guise (e.g. not a poem), I would certainly have
included some sort of editorial note diplomatically noting
the potential positive reasons for readers' interest in the
piece (and indirectly flagging that these might not be exactly
the usual reasons). In the context of this special issue, which
I've not seen, I wonder if the editorial intentions were or were
not sufficiently clear. This is a matter of responsibility to
readers, rather than to the author.
The editors could see there was a problem with the critical
theory, but they seem not to have looked to see if there was
a problem also with the physics, or from the viewpoint of someone
trained to read as a physicist. That would seem to be a bit of
a lapse given the general attitude toward texts, reading,
social positionings, etc. which so far as I know are held by
the editorial group.
I do also know that _Social Text_ has long been run on a
rather more 'amateur' or 'volunteer' basis, so far as the
editorial collective is concerned, than your typical established
academic journal. It is not hard to believe that lots of things
slip through the cracks there, and such an operation, more than
most must rely on the kindness of strangers. It is also more
vulnerable to deceits, and not really a fair playing field for
Sokal's avowed experiment. He should have tried sending it to
_PostModern Culture_, where it would have been read by someone
like N. Katherine Hayles (or someone like me) as part of a
regularized peer-review process. Who knows, there might even
be some good ideas in it, whether he meant to write them or not!
Frankly, I'm a lot more interested in Sokal's agenda than in
Ross'. If we're considering nominations for the Hybris Award,
his own avowed statement that in his (well qualified?) opinion
standards of intellectual argument in the humanities (meaning
postmodern critical theory) have been seriously declining, set
him off on this 'experiment' is quite believable for me. While
I'd be the first to say that when issues get abstract and
counter-intuitive for one's home culture habitus, there is more
than the usual opportunity for verbiage of slight consequence
to get manufactured, I find _some_ of this sort of thinking
to be the only interesting contribution of humanist scholars
to the social sciences for quite a long time (especially in
the U.S.). Maybe what a lot of these people are saying now
is not as easily 'deduced' from textual and historical 'evidence'
(as I assume Sokal thinks good humanistic scholarship should
mainly be done), but it _matters_ to a lot more people. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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