E110: The Grievance Studies Affair: A Rhetorical and Political History (Part 1)
In the first installment of this multi-part series, Alex and Calvin trace the intellectual genealogy behind one of the most consequential academic hoaxes of the past decade.
In Part 1, we outline the precursor hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, and then introduce the three figures who would come to orchestrate what's been called "Sokal Squared": Peter Boghossian, whose "street epistemology" recast New Atheist evangelism as a kind of quasi-Socratic pickup artistry; James Lindsay, a mathematician-turned-massage-therapist whose martial arts backstory and self-assured reinventions of Lacanian theory raise questions about intellectual overconfidence; and Helen Pluckrose, a self-described ex-feminist whose blog posts linked postmodernism to the supposed excesses of intersectional feminism. Along the way, we situate all three within the broader ecology of New Atheism and its entanglements with American imperialism, as well as the Humanities/Science disciplinary division and the shifting terrain of expertise in a post-2020 political landscape.
Works and concepts cited in this episode:
Crenshaw, K. (1989). "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A Selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). W.W. Norton. [Outlining the concept of the "big Other."]
McGee, M.C. (1980). "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology." Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66(1), 1–16.
Pluckrose, H. (2017). "How French ‘Intellectuals’ Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained." Areo Magazine. Retrieved from: https://areomagazine.com/2017/03/27/how-french-intellectuals-ruined-the-west-postmodernism-and-its-impact-explained/
Robbins, B., & Ross, A. (1996). Mystery science theater. Lingua Franca, July 1996. Retrieved from: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9607/mst.html
Schulson, M. (2013, 2 Nov.). Atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian’s guide to converting believers. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20170324025604/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/02/atheist-philosopher-peter-boghossian-s-guide-to-converting-believers.html
Snow, C.P. (1959). The two cultures. The Rede Lecture. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from: https://apps.weber.edu/wsuimages/michaelwutz/6510.Trio/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf
Sokal, A. (1996). A physicist experiments with cultural studies. Lingua Franca, May/June 1996. Retrieved from: http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9605/sokal.html
Sokal, A. (1996). "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Social Text, 46/47, pp. 217–252.
An accessible transcript of this episode is available here (via Descript)