Engineer Deconstructs Literary Criticism

DNS-and-BIND writes "This is the story of one computer professional's explorations in the world of postmodern literary criticism. Wouldn't it be nice to work in a field where nobody can say you're wrong?"

Comments

Wow, this is *old*

[EnVisiCrypt]

This text is several years old, at least. In fact, the wayback machine puts it at about 5 years old.

Come on guys, you know this is really, really old.

Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat

[Walter Wart]

A nice piece of sophistry. However, when the hoax was exposed the editors of Social Text didn't take it so philosophically. They had, and there's no polite way to put this, a s**t hemmorage. They accused Sokal of mopery and dopery and aggravated intention to loiter. They claimed that he was really a right winger and that his volunteer work in Nicaragua was a lie.

Like most stuffed shirts they didn't handle looking foolish very well.

Re:Another exploration into post-modernist literat

[Jerf]

I was going to RTFA you, but I note Sokal's followup has not been linked yet. In it, he makes the following statement:

Of course, I'm not oblivious to the ethical issues involved in my rather unorthodox experiment. Professional communities operate largely on trust; deception undercuts that trust. But it is important to understand exactly what I did. My article is a theoretical essay based entirely on publicly available sources, all of which I have meticulously footnoted. All works cited are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Now, it's true that the author doesn't believe his own argument. But why should that matter? The editors' duty as scholars is to judge the validity and interest of ideas, without regard for their provenance. (That is why many scholarly journals practice blind refereeing.) If the Social Texteditors find my arguments convincing, then why should they be disconcerted simply because I don't? Or are they more deferent to the so-called ``cultural authority of technoscience'' than they would care to admit?

Perhaps this will resolve your misunderstanding on why "no on seems to have made that argument"?

War as Text

[weav]

Anyone who has not read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon", I recommend you borrow a copy and read the "War as Text" section about a lit-crit conference for which the protagonist is doing IT support. Dovetails nicely with the article, and is a real hoot.