The mention of the Sokal paper reminds me that Derrida (who is frequently associated with the po-mo authors parodied by Sokal, although IIRC he was not targeted directly) was basically a troll, making fun of conventional academic philosophy in a similar way than Will makes fun of conventional LW thought. I wonder if Will has read Derrida…?
As to my modest “case,” since you make a point of mentioning that I was “much less badly treated” than some others, this is even more ridiculous, not to say weird. In the United States, at the beginning of the imposture, after Sokal had sent his hoax article to Social Text, I was initially one of the favorite targets, particularly in the newspapers (there’s a lot I could say about this). Because they had to do their utmost, at any cost, on the spot, to discredit what is considered the exorbitant and cumbersome “credit” of a foreign professor. And the entire operation was based on the few words of an off-the-cuff response in a conference that took place more than thirty years ago (in 1966!), and in which I was picking up the terms of a question that had been asked by Jean Hyppolite. Nothing else, absolutely nothing! And what is more, my response was not easy to attack.
(If I may be uncharitable for a moment, this bears more than a little resemblance to some but not all contemporary criticism of MIRI/LW using quotes from ⇐ 2009.)
As you can read later, the Sokal group dialed back their criticism of Derrida, to the point of pretending they had never said anything in the first place.
The mention of the Sokal paper reminds me that Derrida (who is frequently associated with the po-mo authors parodied by Sokal, although IIRC he was not targeted directly) was basically a troll, making fun of conventional academic philosophy in a similar way than Will makes fun of conventional LW thought. I wonder if Will has read Derrida…?
Yes, actually, Derrida was initially targeted by Sokal. His response in Le Monde is worth reading:
(If I may be uncharitable for a moment, this bears more than a little resemblance to some but not all contemporary criticism of MIRI/LW using quotes from ⇐ 2009.)
As you can read later, the Sokal group dialed back their criticism of Derrida, to the point of pretending they had never said anything in the first place.
(I know this situation quite well, as you might imagine. The remark was later published in a certain book with an interesting title.)