Earlier this year, famously, the physicist and political leftist Alan Sokal submitted a fully footnoted, jargon-filled essay of pure nonsense to the editors of the academic journal Social Text, arguing that physical reality was merely a social construct. He didn’t believe a word of it, but he was trying to make a point. The editors published the essay, Mr. Sokal announced his hoax, and all hell broke loose.
For many, the hoax did in fact reveal—as Mr. Sokal intended—the vacuousness of academic theory and the absurd incoherence of the language in which it is perpetrated. For others, however, the hoax was an unforgivable act of disloyalty that undermined a political project of great importance, especially in the university: the effort to “interrogate” knowledge and “unmask” the hidden power relations that determine the bourgeois definition of the “truth.” This is what academic theory—especially the kind practiced by Social Text—claims to be doing much of the time.
Members of both camps showed up at New York University’s Meyer Hall on Wednesday evening, October 30, to witness a panel discussion—hosted by NYU’s journalism department—entitled “After the Media Event: Politics, Culture & the Social Text Affair.” Among the participants were Alan Sokal himself and Andrew Ross, one of the editors of Social Text and by far the most glamorous “cultural studies” professor in the entire universe. Not surprisingly, the auditorium was filled to overflowing. In academic terms, this was a Big Deal.
The evening’s moderator was Jay
