On Sun, 15 Nov 1998, Jim heartfield wrote:
> Clearly in the humanities it is considered good practice to rant on
> about things that you do not understand, otherwise it would not seem
> quite so odd that someone should willingly choose to be honest about the
> limitations of their expertise.
I'm not sure why you equate the work of three french social theorists
the humanities in general, but that's ok. That statement is as sloppy anything spewed forth by Sokal, Bricmont, Gross, or Levitt.
The only thing clear to me, Jim, is that you have made a tremendous leap in logic here. Sokal and Bricmont, deride french social theorists for using theory that they are not absolutely expert in. They (sokal and bricmont) then go on to use theory that they are not expert in. Admitting that they do not have expert knowledge in these theories does not excuse them. If expertise is a criterion that they expectother people to hew to, and they do not, it is a sign of the rankest hypocrisy. To say that it is a sign of intellectual integrity is no more than a bit of ad hoc fluffery.
And really, all they've done is pull embarrassing quotations out of context. I'm not entirely convinced that Sokal has even read anything by Derrida, Irigaray, or Lacan. For his Social Text piece, he didn't read the authors he cited--he called people looking for quotations. My understanding is that Gross and Levitt used the same highly questionable methodology. At least Latour spent a serious amount of time in laboratories, and at least Hayles made a serious attempt to engage chaos theory, whatever you think of the results.
Sokal and Bricmont have, in my estimation, shown themselves to be little more than mean spirited bullies.
frances