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Sokal Hoax by Lingua Franca & Elizabeth Lloyd & David Albert
The Sham That Shook the Academy
Collected here are Sokal's essay on "quantum gravity", his essay revealing the hoax, the newspaper articles that broke the story, and the angry op-eds, letters, and e-mail exchanges sparked by the hoax. Also included are essays in which a wide range of scholars ponder the lessons of the hoax.In May 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in the fashionable academic journal Social Text. The essay quoted hip theorists like Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze. The prose was thick with the jargon of poststructuralism. And the point the essay tried to make was counterintuitive: gravity, Sokal argued, was a fiction that society had agreed upon, and science needed to be liberated from its ideological blinders. When Sokal revealed in the pages of "Lingua Franca" that he had written the article as a parody, the story hit the front page of the New York Times. It set off a national debate still raging today: Are scholars in the humanities trapped in a jargon-ridden Wonderland? Are scientists deluded in thinking their work is objective? Are literature professors suffering from science envy? Was Sokal's joke funny? Was the Enlightenment such a bad thing after all? And isn't it a little bit true that the meaning of gravity is contingent upon your cultural perspective? Collected here are Sokal's original essay on "quantum gravity," his essay revealing the hoax, the newspaper articles that broke the story, and the angry op-eds, letters, and e-mail exchanges sparked by the hoax from intellectuals including Stanley Fish, George F. Will, Michael Beruse , and Katha Pollitt. Also included are extended essays in which a wide range of scholars ponder the long-term lessons of the hoax. |
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| Author(s) : | Format : Paperback Book |
| ISBN-10 : 0803279957 | ISBN-13 : 9780803279957 |
| RRP : £17.50 | Best available price : £ / $ |
| Prices as of : BST check live prices | |
Product Details:
Country Publication : United States
Publication Date : 11/02/2001
Publisher : University of Nebraska Press
Page Length : 288 ppmm
Page Size : 230mm