Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 07:25:18 -0500
Subject: Re: Sokal and ethics


>Excuse me, Rahul, I'm not trying to be an asshole.  But it seems like
>much of what goes on this list, as on m1 before it, turned on struggling
>to figure out just what a leftist was.  How many arguments have been
>spawned on this list by one participant questioning the credentials of
>another.  I'm not saying he is or he isn't.  All I'm saying, and I can be
>a bit more specific here, is that the Sandinista revolution drew active
>support from a relatively broad sector of the United States; so that
>one's being there doesn't make one a "leftist", nor does the other
>evidence Sokal offers:  that he agrees with the ST editorial collective
>on every social issue.  Rather than this "mine's longer" approach to
>claiming the purity of one's political credential, it might be more
>productive to actually figure out what it might mean to call oneself a
>leftist and how that measures up with one's objective position.
>
>Santiago Colas

Why not come right out with the point, Santiago? Before the flap, none of
us knew who Sokal was, and we could hardly have cared about his politics.
The agenda behind this questioning of him, betrayed equally on Marxism 1 by
Jon Beasley Murray, is to pass off the idea that somehow *because* he
published this spoof that showed up a couple of assholes who call
themselves leftists and more importantly a field of study (yes, Leo, I know
not everything in the field is worthless) that its practitioners and the
public for some unknown reason associate with leftism, therefore he is
"really" or "objectively" not a leftist, perhaps even an anti-leftist.
Since he's only a scientist, whatever his poor deluded self may think about
his politics is of course not relevant. This arrogance of the libarts types
always annoys the hell out of scientists, with good reason.


Rahul




     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---