Intellectuals on the Couch: The Sokal Hoax and Other Impostures intellectuelles

IT WOULD BE AMUSING BUT RATHER FRUITLESS to trot out once again the details of the Sokal Hoax, and to savor one more time the stances assumed by the wide range of persons who have made pronouncements upon it. Any good search engine will lead the reader to dozens of internet sites devoted to the affair, and a quick look at the tables of contents of journals in a variety of fields will confirm the obvious: the hoax was a hit. Ever since the truth about “Transforming the boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (Social Text 46/47) was revealed in Lingua Franca in spring of 1996, there has been a veritable explosion of articles and debates involving scientists (including a Nobel recipient), internationally-known scholars in the humanities and social sciences, writers, editors, and students in a range of fields. And things are heating up again now that Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s Impostures intellectuelles (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997) has been published in translation in the US by St. Martin’s Press. (The British edition was published by Profi Books in July, 1998).