Re: Sokal
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 11:02:30 +1100
You know, it suddenly occured to me that this is all very much like a story
I recently wrote. The premise of the story was to illustrate the
discrepancy between a text and its translation to a different language. The
text to be translated, I wrote as a nonsense poem out of syllables that
sounded good, which in the story was supposed to be written in some archaic
Latinate language. Then, I got out a big language dictionary and just for
fun tried to `translate' it. To my surprise, I found that my poem actually
made some sense in Spanish! I have never in my life learned Spanish, but it
did. Thus the whole story became concerned with the translator trying to
decide what the words she *couldn't* find in her dictionary meant.
So does this mean I wrote the poem and I constructed the meaning? Or I
found meaning in something that had no meaning? Couldn't you argue that,
like our favourite old tree collapsing in our Zen woods, there *is* no
meaning until we find it. Either way it came out as quite a good poem:
You, my darling, my candied torment
>From continual agony in vain
Show me, my juicy globe, unyielding mistress
You, my foundling, my sugared cake.
It also reminds me of my first year Art Theory tutorials, where I would
actually get a grasp on the subject when I would talk nonsense and see what
my tutor made of it.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest
Matt Kozusko wrote:
> > The editors of the journal an all the readers were evidently able and
> > prepared to see some meaning which was never there.
>
> Here is a link to the "reply" the those editors wrote in defense of
> accepting and publishing the article. The text of the article itself
> has evidently been taken off-line.
>
> http://www.larecherche.cie.fr/FOR/C9701/SOKAL/WW52.html
>
> It is interesting to consider that the article has several different
> "meanings," at least one of which is a semi-stable poststructuralist
> plea. Supposedly, those who understand the language and the tradition
> of thought behind it, "understand" what the article is literally trying
> to say--they get its "meaning." Those who don't understand the language
> ("hermeneutics," "transgressive," "Lacanian," and "hegemony" are offered
> as examples) and who aren't familiar with the tradition of thought
> behind it, don't get its literal meaning.
>
> It has been widely suggested that Sokal himself didn't realize he was
> making some sense.