I don't want to reopen the debate over the Intellectual Imposters book
[Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, _Intellectual impostures: postmodern
philosophers' abuse of science_ (London: Profile, 1998) but if people do
want to read it as an introduction to debates in
the philosophy of science, then, they will also want to look at the many
replies to Sokal's original 'deception'. Many were published in
_Liberation_ [the left-centre French newspaper] and in
_Social Text_ [the journal which accepted the original piece. I personally
thought the dishonesty wrong and it was all too predictable that a parody
of certain ways mathematics have been used metaphorically by some
postmodernists
should have been used to declare open-season on all theory and all
relativism. The broader questions are too important to be dealt with in
this silly manner.
On the issue Chris raised, I agree that Mike Davis' book is a brilliant
evocation of place and context but it is hardly innocent of theory. There
remains a need to move to and fro between theory and empirical work. From
one perspective theory can be seen as little more than high-level
generalisation together with deductions from those statements. From
another perspective empirical inquiry is framed by theoretical
categorisation, political priorities and aesthetic demands. To rubbish one
or other in toto seems absurd. Where the balance is struck in any
particular piece of work is partly a personal judgement and while I find
Mike Davis' place biographies inspiring, I also know that work on his
economism, his apocalyptic style, and his understanding of how race
fragments class solidarities leads us to problematise some of the pleasure
effects in the text. And that, of course, is not the same as saying one
stops enjoying those effects - they just have to be examined from a
theoretical angle. But, I did not want to starty an essay on Davis here. I
merely wanted to problematise the pleasure effects in _Intellectual
Impostures_ or at least remind us all of where we could go to begin that
work.
Gerry Kearns
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