Mr. Sokal has been attacked as a "left conservative" because he is trying to stake out a territory free from the political claims of culture. That would be the territory of reasoned argument, objective fact and Enlightenment insight, where even debates like these might take place.
***********
Entry on race in Diderot's Encyclopédie
NÈGRE
Man who inhabits different parts of the earth, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. Africa has no other inhabitants but the blacks. Not only the color, but also the facial traits distinguish them from other men: large and flat noses, thick lips, and wool instead of hair. They appear to constitute a new species of mankind.
If one moves further away from the Equator toward the Antarctic, the black skin becomes lighter, but the ugliness remains: one finds there this same wicked people that inhabits the African Meridian. If one goes east, the features soften and become more regular, but the skin color remains black as inside Africa. After these [eastern peoples], one encounters a greatly tanned people, distinguishable from others by their narrow and obliquely positioned long eyes. If we pass through this vast part of the world which appears to be separate from Europe, from Africa and Asia, one finds--if several travelers are to be believed--a different human variety. There is absolutely no white person: the land is peopled by red nations tanned in a thousand ways...
Many physicians have researched the causes of the blackness of the negro. The major opinions that the physicians hold on this matter can be reduced to two: one attributes the cause to bile, the other to some fluid contained in the veins of the mucous membrane. Malpighi, Ruysch, Littré, Santorini, Heifter, and Albinus have done intriguing researches on the skin of the negroes. The first opinion on the blackness of the negro is entirely supported by proofs in a work entitled Dissertation sur la cause physique de la couleur des nègres, etc. by M. Barrere (Paris, 1741). The following is how he deduced his hypothesis: when, after a long maceration of the black skin in water, the outer skin is removed and attentively examined, one finds that it is black, very thin, and transparent when held up to daylight. That is how I saw it in America, and it has been remarked upon as well by the anatomists of our time, such as M. Winslow...
It needs to be further observed, however, that if the outer skin of the negro is transparent, the color becomes pronounced in the under-skin, which is reddish-brown, bordering on the dark. But since the skin of the black, like that of the white, is made up of veins, it must necessarily contain some juice. The results of the examination of this juice are at present in question. However, one can say with some basis that the juice is analogous to the bile, an opinion supported by observation. (1) On the cadavers of the Negroes whom I had the opportunity to dissect in Cayenne, the bile is always as dark as ink; and (2) it is always more or less black in proportion to the skin color of the negro; (3) the blood is blackish-red, again according to the grade of blackness of the negro's skin; (4) it is certain that the bile re-enters the chyle in the blood, and flows with it through all parts of the body...
The vessels of the mucous body, following the observations of Malpighi: the skin and the cuticle of the negroes are white; the blackness comes only from the mucous or the reticular membrane which is between the epidermis and the skin. Ruysch's injections have partly confirmed this discovery, and brought them to light. The outer skin of the negro is not white, according to this anatomy, because it has the whiteness of a [animal's] horn (blancheur de la corne), which always has a mixture of black. Ruysch sent to Heifter a portion of the skin of a negro. It was white, certainly, but the external surface of the epidermis was black-tainted, the inside face was covered as well with deep, black taint. Santorini, in his Remarques anatomiques, reports of observations that establish the cause of the color of the Negroes the mucous membrane. These researches prove that, if the negro's epidermis was lifted, there remains an extremely black colored portion of the mucous membrane, on the skin or the vascular tissues. This black portion of the mucous membrane is what leaves black stain on the fingers that lifted the epidermis. There is, as a result, a particular reservoir of this black taint between the epidermis and the skin.
The mucous membrane, a tissue almost unknown, appears to quite unequally distributed in different parts of the body. It is closely attached to the epidermis, and could not be entirely separated from it, and that is why the black color cannot be erased off of the outer skin, and is of a deeper texture in the teguments of the inner surface.
The vessels of the reticular membrane are full of blackish liquor (liqueur noirâtre). One may ask where this comes from. Santorini did not believe that one can decide on the source of this material which taints the reticular membrane of the negroes; but suspected that the liver could furnish the taint of the skin in human species. The red color of the fish's liver, various sorts jaundice to which humans are subject, and the blackishness at one finds in the bile vesicles, led him to this conjecture.
(From "Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader," Blackwell, 1997, edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. Alongside Diderot's rant are included others by Kant, Hegel, Hume, Jefferson and others less well known. It is all stuff guaranteed to embarrass a Ku Klux Klansman. Of African origin, Eze explained his purpose in pulling this collection together:
<startquote>
>From a historical perspective, if we compare the European Enlightenment to
Greek antiquity, we notice that in both the realms of philosophy and
politics, the major thinkers of Greek antiquity articulated social and
human geographical differences on the basis of the opposition between the
"cultured" and the "barbaric." Aristotle, for example, defined the human
being as a rational animal, and supposed that the cultured people (such as
the male, aristocratic Greeks) were capable of living in a reasonable way
and organized their society accordingly (democratically), while the
"barbarians," the non-Greeks, incapable of culture and lacking the superior
rational capacity for the Athenian-style democratic social organization,
lived brutishly and under despotism. European Enlightenment thinkers
retained the Greek ideal of reason, as well as this reason's categorical
function of discriminating between the cultured (now called the
"civilized") and the "barbarian" (the "savage" or the "primitive"). It can
be argued, in fact, that the Enlightenment's declaration of itself as "the
Age of Reason" was predicated upon precisely the assumption that reason
could historically only come to maturity in modern Europe, while the
inhabitants of areas outside Europe, who were considered to be of
non-European racial and cultural origins, were consistently described and
theorized as rationally inferior and savage.)
<endquote>
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)