The “Social Text” affair involved a brilliant parody article submitted by physicist Alan Sokal of NYU to a trendy, posturing leftist “cultural studies” journal at Duke University called “Social Text” — basically Sokal wanted to see if pompous leftist academics would publish an article full of absolute drivel if it flattered their ideological and cultural posturing. They published it, and the rest is history.
Unfortunately, many academics still have not studied or taken seriously the lessons of this affair.
There are some great links/articles/interviews at the author’s website:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/#papers
I didn’t read the 1st post, lol. I got 3 or 4 paragraphs in before I asked myself, “who wrote this, the Chomskybot?”
‘This goes back to before the days of FR - for all who may have missed it the first time around (and for others who just want some renewed chuckles). This is the parody article submitted to (and blithely published by) a trendy leftist “cultural studies” journal at Duke U. called “Social Text” — one of the all-time great parodies in the history of culture!’
Great stuff. I didn’t wade through the whole thing the first time I came across it. Having done so now, I’m sure it had many folks in the humanities going in a big way. Much puffery with little actual content - and most of that didn’t really make sense. Wow, sounds like Dem talking points...
LOL! My first impression when I started reading this was that it sounded Marxist. Glad I read some of the posts pointing out that it’s satire before I sounded off.
Don’t worry about understanding this intellectual exercise in frustration. The entire physical universe is an illusion. Get over it!
What Sokal fails to understand is that it is NOT parody to these people. At their core, they really believe what comes out of their mouth (and that of their friends) constitutes reality. Their opinions consistently become ingrained in the previailing culture—why shouldn’t they also trump the laws of physics? The thought the joke was on them. But really, it is on all of us.
Reality and Objectivity have always been highly overrated.
What is more important than ‘fact’ is how you ‘feel’ about it and how it will advance the social agendas you support.