1/28/2004   slide 47
Sokal Hoax
•Misuse of political implications, wild misuse of science, and obscure writing all parodied in “the Sokal hoax”
•Not directly concerned with semiotics, but aimed at general culture theory and scientific trappings
•Sokal published the hoax paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in Social Text in 1996
–Not a peer-reviewed journal
–Goal of bringing together different viewpoints
–Not regular edition but special issue on “science wars”
–Wanted to include a scientist
–
•
While I think we can all agree that everything is always what it seems, that doesn’t mean that nothing really exists outside of our perception. (read from response)


NOT Semiotics he was attacking