post-structuralism
Sokal Hoax - 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' by Alan Sokal
In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal performed an experiment after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the abuses of science and mathematics by writers and academics under the umbrella of 'cultural studies/poststructuralism/postmodernism. Here is the original hoax text, laced with nonsense phrases, meaningless mathematics, and topped with flattering citations of the editors of the journal to which it was submitted, Social Text. When the article was accepted and published, Sokal revealed his deliberate hoax, and threw petrol on the flames of the already burning 'Science Wars'.
Note: This article was published in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).
Sokal Hoax - 'A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies' by Alan Sokal
Physicist Alan Sokal reveals the motivations behind his infamous 'Sokal hoax' article - an experiment after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the abuses of science and mathematics by writers and academics under the umbrella of 'cultural studies/poststructuralism/postmodernism'.
The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)
Welcome to the desert of the Real - Slavoj Žižek
The philosopher-psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek’s take on the aftermath of the September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks, including his trademark references to popular culture to explain his Lacanian psychoanalysis. He presents a choice: “there are two fundamental ways to react to such traumatic events which cause unbearable anxiety: the way of superego and the way of the act”, and it is in ‘the act’ in which he sees the possibility to escape “the reassertion of the barbaric violence” (note: this is not the longer book of the same name).
[i]America's "holiday from history" was a fake: America's peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere.
Anarchism and the politics of ressentiment - Saul Newman
[b]This essay critiques classical anarchism using Nietzsche’s concept of ‘ressentiment’ and Michel Foucault’s ideas on power.
Intellectuals & Power: A conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze
This is a transcript of a 1972 conversation between the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, which discusses the links between the struggles of women, homosexuals, prisoners etc to class struggle, and also the relationship between theory, practice and power (4,000 words).
Postscript on the Societies of Control - Gilles Deleuze
In this short essay Deleuze looks to move beyond Michel Foucault’s historical understanding of ‘disciplinary societies’, where power is exercised within discrete institutions, towards the concept of 'societies of control'. In many ways it parallels the ideas of the Italian radical left around the concept of the ‘social factory’, providing an intersection between post-structuralist philosophy and autonomist Marxism.
1. Historical
