[lbo-talk] Fwd: [cultstud-l] Sokal & Bricmont or Lenin?

[Doug Henwood]

From: "Michael Simkin" <simkin_michael at hotmail.com>
To: "CULTSTUD-L: A listserv devoted to Cultural Studies" 
<cultstud-l at lists.acomp.usf.edu>
Subject: [cultstud-l] Sokal & Bricmont or Lenin?
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 18:45:04 -0700
X-URL: <http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/cultstud/>

Dear Collegues,

some of  you are probably familiar with the book "Fashionable Nonsense" by
Sokal & Bricmont (the book grew out of the celebrated Sokal hoax).
I read this book recently and was stricken by the similarity of this writing
to one of those books that I was forced to read in Soviet Union. Namely
"Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" by Lenin. I read Lenin's book again
(this time not under the gun of a Communist) and wrote the following quiz:

http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/sokalenin.html

A dozen of quotations from either "Fashionable Nonsense" or "Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism" are given. The subject is asked to decide which book it
is from. Afterwards the quiz is graded automatically.

Mikhail Simkin