>Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 19:06:53 -0500
>Reply-To: Pre/Text issues discussion <PTISSUES who-is-at MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
>Sender: Pre/Text issues discussion <PTISSUES who-is-at MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
>From: Victor J Vitanza <sophist who-is-at utarlg.uta.edu>
>Subject: Re: Sokal replies (fwd)
>To: Multiple recipients of list PTISSUES
> <PTISSUES who-is-at MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender: Pre/Text issues discussion <PTISSUES who-is-at MIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
>Poster: Victor J Vitanza <sophist who-is-at utarlg.uta.edu>
>Subject: Re: Sokal replies (fwd)
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>FYInterests (from another list),
>Victor
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 16:25:52 -0700 (PDT)
>From: DAYR who-is-at alm.admin.usfca.edu
>To: deleuze-guattari who-is-at jefferson.village.Virginia.edu
>Subject: RE: Sokal replies
>
>The message "Sokal replies" which just came across my screen angers me
>so much I feel the need to reply even though I would hope that much of
>what I say here will be repetitive for members of this list, and I'm
>not sure in anycase if Sokal actually replied for this list or his
>"reply" was grafted into another message (which I think is rather the
>case).
> First of all, I think it is the very refusal to acknowledge
>the slipperiness and problematic nature of such terms as "law" and
>"reality" which makes "Sokal's reply" mere sophistry and "obscurantism
>." I don't know the full text of Ross's which Sokal refers to, but
>the problem of "law" has a history, which Sokal seems to be ignorant
>of. At the worst, the dismissal of contexts for such terms seems a
>complete rejection of the history of philosophy as a history of a
>series of questions.
> Second, I find "Sokal's reply" to totally evade the problem by
>appealing to Swift. Swift wasn't writing parody within the context of
>late 20th century American university discourse. Ethics is contextual
>, and such an appeal is evasive. The point others have made still, in
>my opinion sticks: the parody made use of a certain trust in the value
>of statements within a professional and institutional context. Social
>text, by publishing the work of a physicist was attempting to extend a
>discourse beyond the boundaries of its usual practitioners, and this
>meant an even greater act of faith in the person submitting. Sokal
>violated that trust, even as the editors of Social Text, if what Sokal
>writes is accurate, must be held accountable for not providing
>_critical_ scholarly review and, seemingly, publishing the article
>largely on the basis of Sokal's professional status as a scientist and
>as a professor. It seems to me that this latter act, by Social Text,
>does, indeed, speak of a closed community where "trendy" arguments are
>generated; but this addresses an institutional problem which
>Sokal is part of, and not outside of (in fact, which he accepted and
>used in getting published). (But this problem has been addressed many
>times on this List already.)
> Third, Sokal's call for the "left to reclaim its
>Englightenment roots" is simply ridiculous for all of the reasons of
>hermeneutic critiques of historicism generated since the end of the
>19th century. This type of statement is simply embarassing and shows
>a very uncritical conservatism.
> Fourth, and this largely pertains to some of the comments that
>have appeared on this List, and since I don't have any interest in the
>type of writing that Lingua Franca markets I'm not really sure how
>much this argument pertains to Sokal's own vocabulary, nothing I've
>ever seen in Social Text has appeared to me to be 'deconstructivist,'
>especially if that term is equated with Derrida's writing. I rarely
>see in ST ambivalences worked through and their binary interdependence
>undermined. I don't often find philosophical problems pushed to the
>point where their traditional frames break down. I'm not saying that
>I approve or disapprove of the writing in ST (as if it could be
>summarized in that fashion, anyway), just that there seems to be
>little evidence of deconstruction in that journal. I think that Sokal
>would find deconstruction, as it was written in the 80's to be much
>more "obscure" than the likes of ST. To my mind, deconstructionist
>writing has rarely appeared in academic journals over the past several
>years. The writing appears to me more structural than poststructural.
> Last, as I'm sure it seems to many on this List and elsewhere,
>whether they like or dislike Ross's work, Sokal's appeal to having
>exposed "the nakedness of ...local emperors," thus giving relief to
>oppressed humanists and social scientists, is nonsense. What he has
>given is himself and his time as more fodder for the "culture wars"
>which nourish New York Times "intellectuals" and the gossip monglers
>of Lingua Franca. Far from having injected himself into a real
>discussion of philosophical problems of culture he has sold himself to
>the marketing of those problems in an easy to understand, unrigorous,
>and thus "obscure," but terribly powerful, economy. His refusal to
>take language and concepts to task undermines any genuine critique he
>may have of the "market" of cultural studies. And thus, he merely
>joins this type of market at its lowest level, and refuses to engage
>in a philosophical, and thus scientific, professionalism.
> Writing, to appropriate Sokal's own false self-abnegation, as
>a mere high-school librarian, I find this whole "debate," pathetic. I
>hope that this letter doesn't simply find the chorus on this List, but
>if it does, please understand the anger I feel, especially within the
>context of a List dedicated to discussing issues such as "reality" and
>"law" within the spirit of rigor and scholarship in Deleuze and Guattari's
>work.
>
> Ron Day
>
>