The Sokal hoax : the sham that shook the academy / edited by the editors of Lingua franca.

Format:

• Book

Contributor:

• Sokal, Alan D., 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Sokal, Alan D., 1955-.
• Fraud in science.
• Science--Philosophy.
• Science--Social aspects.
• Humanities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (283 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, c2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In May 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in the fashionable academic journal "Social Text." The essay quoted hip theorists like Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze. The prose was thick with the jargon of poststructuralism. And the point the essay tried to make was counterintuitive: gravity, Sokal argued, was a fiction that society had agreed upon, and science needed to be liberated from its ideological blinders. When Sokal revealed in the pages of "Lingua Franca" that he had written the article as a parody, the story hit the front page of the "New York Times." It set off a national debate still raging today: Are scholars in the humanities trapped in a jargon-ridden Wonderland? Are scientists deluded in thinking their work is objective? Are literature professors suffering from science envy? Was Sokal's joke funny? Was the Enlightenment such a bad thing after all? And isn't it a little bit true that the meaning of gravity is contingent upon your cultural perspective? Collected here for the first time are Sokal's original essay on "quantum gravity," his essay revealing the hoax, the newspaper articles that broke the story, and the angry op-eds, letters, and e-mail exchanges sparked by the hoax from intellectuals across the country, including Stanley Fish, George F. Will, Michael Berube, and Katha Pollitt. Also included are extended essays in which a wide range of scholars ponder the long-term lessons of the hoax.

Contents:

• ""Contents ""; ""Introduction ""; ""Transgressing The Boundaries: Toward A Transformative Hermeneutics Of Quantum Gravity ""; ""Revelation: A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies ""; ""Social Text Response: Mystery Science Theater ""; ""Scientist Takes Academia For A Ride With Parody ""; ""Is It Gibberish Or Merely Obscure? Scientist Hoaxes Academic Journal ""; ""Postmodern Gravity Deconstructed, Slyly ""; ""Hokum For High-Brows ""; ""Professor Sokalâ€?S Bad Joke ""; ""When Pretension Reigns Supreme ""; ""A Physics Prof Drops A Bomb On The Faux Left ""; ""Smitten With Gibberish ""
• ""Hoax Article Yanks Academicsâ€? Legs """"Pomolotov Cocktail, And Selected Responses ""; ""Another Dispatch From The Culture Wars ""; ""Scholarly Article A Fine Hoax: Social Scientists Wore No Clothes ""; ""Illogical Dons Swallow Hoaxerâ€?S Leap Into Quantum Gibberish ""; ""Sokalâ€?S Prank ""; ""Sokal, A Self-Parodist ""; ""Academic Insult In Greenwich Village, And Selected Responses ""; ""When Clever Men Think Rubbish, Sound The Alarm Bells ""; ""Sokal Is No Socrates ""; ""Is There Science After The Cold War? ""; ""Why I Wrote My Parody ""; ""My Sokaled Life; Or, Revenge Of The Nerds ""
• ""The Sokal Hoax """"Sokalâ€?S Hoax, And Selected Responses ""; ""What The Sokal Hoax Ought To Teach Us: The Pernicious Consequences And Internal Contradictions Of â€?â€?Postmodernistâ€?â€? Relativism, And Selected Responses ""; ""Was Sokalâ€?S Hoax Justified? ""; ""The â€?â€?Sokal Affairâ€?â€? Takes Transatlantic Turn ""; ""Friendly Fire: The Hoaxing Of ""; ""Alan Sokalâ€?S â€?â€?Transgressionâ€?â€? ""; ""The Science Wars In India ""; ""Postmodernism And The Left ""; ""Cultural Studies And Its Discontents: A Comment On The Sokal Affair ""
• ""Just Doing Your Job: Some Lessons Of The Sokal Affair """"Reflections On The Sokal Affair ""; ""A Plea For Reason, Evidence, And Logic ""; ""Lingua Franca Roundtable ""; ""Among Our Academic Contributors ""; ""Source Acknowledgments ""

Notes:

• Description based upon print version of record.
• Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0-8032-1924-5

OCLC:

50482287