The account of Professor Stanley Fish's appearance at Lagado University currently zipping about on the internet has been a source of perplexity to those following the Sokal affair. Some claim that the news item is entirely spurious, as much a hoax as the original Sokal piece in Social Text. Others claim that the remarks of Professor Fish, and the explanations offered by members of STET, the Social Text Explanation Team , are so close to other, independently verifiable accounts that there can be no serious question about their authenticity.
We take no sides in this perplexed matter. We give the item below as we received it. The account came to us as having been "originally published in LU/English, the English department newsletter of Lagado University." (We have been unable to obtain a copy of this newsletter. Since numerous other versions have been circulating in cyberspace -- in one of which Professor Fish figures as "Stanley Eugene Poseur," in another as "Professor Poisson" -- there is reason to suppose that the version below is not identical with the original. We would be grateful for information about the "variorum" text.)
The Social Text Explanation Team, under the leadership of Professor Stanley Fish, made a presentation at LU at the beginning of Fall semester.
Professor Fish began the session by explaining that the STET visit should not be understood as an effort at "damage control." It had nothing to do with "damage control." It did not resemble "damage control." It partook of not the slightest flavor, soupcon or hint of "damage control." Professor Fish explained that he, Fish, is a detached and witty maverick universally admired by "advanced" graduate students for purveying cynical and glittering paradoxes, not the sort of fellow who indulges in santimonious bombast and insincere pieties in the name of "damage control." "Damage control" was, he explained, no part of his concern there today.
What really concerns Fish is the threat to the integrity of science from people who, like Alan Sokal, put its rules to devious and fraudulent uses. Science, Fish pointed out, is a communal effort that relies on trust, on exemplary models, and on standards. The scientist must be able to rely on the reports of his colleagues. Editorial collectivities of scholarly journals must, to precisely the same extent, be able to rely on the sincerity of their contributors.
Sokal has imperilled this confidence. He put forward his fraudulent undertaking as reliable, he surrounded his deception with all the marks of authenticity, he camouflaged his "prank" in a dense thicket of footnotes, he shamelessly deployed the names of the century's greatest scientists with intent to deceive, and he craftily larded his treacherous submission with genuine scientific terminology.
Some people, subsidized by a coalition of powerful, well-financed, right-wing groups and associated with individuals who are known to be acquainted with persons whose grandfathers may well have been members of the Ku Klux Klan, affect to find Sokal's hoax funny. It is not funny and they know it isn't funny. They are just pretending to think it's funny.
The far from comical consequence of this episode is the attitude of deep and corrosive suspicion now in full flower in the offices of learned journals all across the United States. The simple faith of scholarly editors is a thing of the past. Where before they eagerly seized upon submissions with the naive delight of children opening Christmas presents, they must now look uneasily upon the manila envelopes flooding into their offices as potential infernal devices threatening to explode with deafening horse-laughs.
Trust, a small word of large meaning, is gone. Gone forever. Now every article will have to be warily checked for logical consistency. Every paragraph and sentence will have to be painfully studied to determine what it means, if anything. Never again can an editorial collectivity feel entirely safe publishing an unintelligible and incoherent paper.
At the conclusion of Professor Fish's moving peroration, the meeting was addressed by Andrew Ross and Bruce Robbins, speaking for the editorial collectivity of Social Text. They made the following points:
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