Colleagues,
I have only been able to recently rejoin this list and I was wondering if
any of you had noticed the attack on Foucault by Alan Sokal in his _Lingua
Franca_, written to explain the parody of postmodernism that appeared in
_Social Text_? He does this by quoting Alan Ryan as follows:
It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always
that power could be undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as
saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But
American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large
numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about
objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. [end Sokal
quoting Ryan]
Assuming (but not requiring!) that most of us would regard Ryan's
rendition of Foucault, along with Sokal's use of it, as flawed, along what
lines would we want to say that Sokal and Ryan are wrong about Foucault?
--John Ransom
ransom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dept. of Political Science
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA 17013
I have only been able to recently rejoin this list and I was wondering if
any of you had noticed the attack on Foucault by Alan Sokal in his _Lingua
Franca_, written to explain the parody of postmodernism that appeared in
_Social Text_? He does this by quoting Alan Ryan as follows:
It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace
Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always
that power could be undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as
saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But
American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large
numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about
objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. [end Sokal
quoting Ryan]
Assuming (but not requiring!) that most of us would regard Ryan's
rendition of Foucault, along with Sokal's use of it, as flawed, along what
lines would we want to say that Sokal and Ryan are wrong about Foucault?
--John Ransom
ransom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dept. of Political Science
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA 17013