This article will be cleaned soon.  Many thank to Ms. Liu for allowing 
this article to be placed here.  [jwalsh@u.washington.edu]

Mon Jun 10 07:33:50 1996
From: Catherine Liu <liuxx@gold.tc.umn.edu>

> 
> On Thu, 6 Jun 1996, Catherine Liu wrote:
> 
> > Thanks to John Young's posting, I found Sokal's page and downloaded the
> > (in)famous article. Upon a quick perusal, I would have to say that if
> > this had been a paper from one of my students I would not have accepted
> > it.
> >
> > I'm no scientist, but let's talk methodology -- I have come across
> > students in the Cultural Studies Department here who flatten out their
> > references and make wild generalizations like Sokal and I tend to send
> > them back to rewrite and include at least five sustained pages of close
> > reading of one of the works in the bibliography. This is a first step to
> > some kind of discipline. It's obvious that what Sokal has done is
> > satirize this particular practice of non-reading. He has picked quotes 
here and there
> > and pastiched them together with a kind of left-leaning ideological glue.
> > The problem is however, that Sokal himself is guilty of levelling all his
> > citations into one terrifying, undifferentiated mass of text. Derrida =
> > Donna Haraway = Stanley Aronowitz = Luce Irigaray = Albert Einstein =
> > Neil Bohr. It is effective satire, in a way, because it does address
> > itself directly to certain practices in cultural studies, but Sokal steps
> > in it himself. (what was that smell?)
> >
> > In his expose in Lingua Franca, Sokal  writes as if all of the *post-modern*
> > theory he cited was equivalent in some way, thus committing the very sin
> > of intellectual laziness that he accuses The Social Text Editors of. His
> > satire is therefore symptomatic insofar as it reproduces the very problem
> > that he would like to condemn.
> >
> > Sokal satirizes the stupidity of endless analogical relationships --
> > scientific formulae become illustrative of theoretical positions, but he
> > himself is making equivalent radically heterogenous discourses. Aronowitz
> > is radically incompatible with Derrida, as we all know.
> >
> > The fact that Aronowitz and Ross saw fit to publish this piece (of
> > something) is revealing, however, and I find myself in the ironic
> > position with graduate students of demanding from them a level of rigour
> > that editors like Aronowitz and Ross would not appreciate. So am I really
> > preparing them  for the profession? I wonder sometimes, given the climate
> > of things. It is easier right now to pass by making liberational claims
> > for all sorts of bizarre ideas that sound politically progressive.
> >
> > I'm even more disgusted with Ross and Aronowitz right now. They are
> > giving theory a bad name, and being sanctimonious about it too. They
> > aren't to give up easily their positions as leaders of the left, I'm not
> > sure what to do .
> >
> > In the meantime the Alan Sokals of the world will pat themselves on the
> > back for having spoken in the name of "humanism" and "objective reality."
> > Sokal then "comes out" as a leftist too.
> >
> > What a mess,
> >
> > Catherine Liu
Department of French and Italian
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
> >
>