Fwd: Re: Postmodernism: Materialist? [re-posting]

[Doug Henwood]

rdumain@igc.org wrote:

>It would take some time for me to unearth this information, but the 
>textual evidence comes from a specific article in the NEW YORK TIMES 
>in the wake of the Sokal affair.  The pro-SOCIAL TEXT people went 
>apoplectic when caught with their pants down.  Who are they?  I 
>can't recall exactly, but I think Stanley Fish was one of them.

Stanley Fish was pressed into service by the Duke PR department to 
write an op-ed piece for the New York Times. I'm familiar with the 
whole Sokal/Social Text hoax. Sokal has read little and understands 
less of the literature he claimed to be debunking with his prank - I 
know this from three longish conversations with the guy. The ST 
people you're talking about are mainly Stanley Aronowitz, who is 
hardly someone to draw conclusions about an entire body of thought 
from <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Jobless_future.html>. But I was 
more interested in who the "they" are in this passage:

>  > rdumain@igc.org wrote:
>  >Yet if you examine their arguments, any question of an objective
>  >world or verifiability of any truths about it has been banished from
>  >their world view.

Doug