Page 96 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 96
What Do We Know about the World?
they almost demand ridicule along with refutation” (Sokal, 2010: 136–
137). In this sense, the writing of his parody fits in with the general goal
of the use of the “fighting fire with fire” approach, which was defined
above (in section 2.4) as ridiculing the other, intellectually abusive party
by making them experience the negative and destructive effects of their
own subverting of intellectual standards. Indeed, in his paper “Trans-
gressing the boundaries: An afterword”, published in Dissent, Sokal ex-
plicitly stated that in his parodic, nonsensical article he used the very
same means of argumentative subversion which could be identified in
the criticised texts:
Like the genre it is meant to satirize [...] my article is a mélange of truths,
half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically cor-
rect sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. [...] I also employed some
other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in
the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed
off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that
sounds good but whose meaning is ambiguous; and confusion between the
technical and everyday senses of English words. (Sokal, 1996b; also in Sokal,
2010: 93–94)
Speaking of his intentions to turn the subversion of intellectual
standards against its main perpetrators, Sokal remarks: “[...] the blow
that can’t be brushed off is the one that’s self-inflicted. I offered the So-
cial Text editors an opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual rigor.
Did they meet the test? I don’t think so.” (Sokal, 1996a)
It is easy to see that the test to which the editors of Social Texts were
subjected by Sokal’s submission of the article reveals a kind of tactical
ingenuity – a tactic that can be compared to the tactic of a fork or dou-
ble-attack in chess, whereby the attacker stands to benefit from any pos-
sible response on the part of the adversary.
This phenomenon was nicely described by Michel Rio, one of the
participants in the debate surrounding the Sokal affair. According to
Rio, Sokal falsified the targeted form of discourse in order to test the
criteria for recognizing its validity. Thus, if the adherents of this type of
discourse (in this case the editors of Social Text) had identified the falsi-
fication – in which case they would not have published the text – they
would have demonstrated the importance of the criteria of intellectual
rigour, which were clearly not met in the falsified (parodic) form of dis-
course. If, on the other hand, they failed to recognise the falsification
and went ahead and published the text, as actually happened, this would
expose a fundamental flaw in their standards of academic and scientif-
they almost demand ridicule along with refutation” (Sokal, 2010: 136–
137). In this sense, the writing of his parody fits in with the general goal
of the use of the “fighting fire with fire” approach, which was defined
above (in section 2.4) as ridiculing the other, intellectually abusive party
by making them experience the negative and destructive effects of their
own subverting of intellectual standards. Indeed, in his paper “Trans-
gressing the boundaries: An afterword”, published in Dissent, Sokal ex-
plicitly stated that in his parodic, nonsensical article he used the very
same means of argumentative subversion which could be identified in
the criticised texts:
Like the genre it is meant to satirize [...] my article is a mélange of truths,
half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically cor-
rect sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. [...] I also employed some
other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in
the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed
off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that
sounds good but whose meaning is ambiguous; and confusion between the
technical and everyday senses of English words. (Sokal, 1996b; also in Sokal,
2010: 93–94)
Speaking of his intentions to turn the subversion of intellectual
standards against its main perpetrators, Sokal remarks: “[...] the blow
that can’t be brushed off is the one that’s self-inflicted. I offered the So-
cial Text editors an opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual rigor.
Did they meet the test? I don’t think so.” (Sokal, 1996a)
It is easy to see that the test to which the editors of Social Texts were
subjected by Sokal’s submission of the article reveals a kind of tactical
ingenuity – a tactic that can be compared to the tactic of a fork or dou-
ble-attack in chess, whereby the attacker stands to benefit from any pos-
sible response on the part of the adversary.
This phenomenon was nicely described by Michel Rio, one of the
participants in the debate surrounding the Sokal affair. According to
Rio, Sokal falsified the targeted form of discourse in order to test the
criteria for recognizing its validity. Thus, if the adherents of this type of
discourse (in this case the editors of Social Text) had identified the falsi-
fication – in which case they would not have published the text – they
would have demonstrated the importance of the criteria of intellectual
rigour, which were clearly not met in the falsified (parodic) form of dis-
course. If, on the other hand, they failed to recognise the falsification
and went ahead and published the text, as actually happened, this would
expose a fundamental flaw in their standards of academic and scientif-
