What strikes me more is that this Simkin fellow apparently assumes (and assumes that his readers will assume) that finding parallels with Lenin's thought is prima facie evidence for dismissing Sokal and Bricemont. Is this the intellectual standard for critical studies types? If so, can Lynne Cheney stop pickin' on 'em now?
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:24:39 -0400
>
>
>On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:12:55 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>writes:
>> 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
...