The politics of the sokal affair

IN SPRING 1996, as part of the backlash against significant changes in the cultural and political climate in the US, New York University physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated a “hoax�? on the journal Social Text, when he submitted an article titled “Transgressing the boundaries: toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity�? (Sokal 1996c). The Social Text collective included it as the final piece in their spring/summer 1996 special issue on “Science Wars�? (Social Text 1996), which focused on the recent debates in the field of science studies and attacks on it by some members of the scientific community and the political right. Coinciding with the release of Social Text, Lingua Franca, in collusion with Sokal, published another article by Sokal exposing the Social Text article as purposefully fraudulent (Sokal 1996b; herein referred to as the Sokal expose). Sokal explains that he had become convinced of the “apparent decline in the standards of rigor in certain precincts of the academic humanities�? and sought to confirm his conviction (Sokal 1996b: 62). He confessed that his article was “a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies - whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross - publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions? (Sokal 1996b: 62). The answer for Sokal, and for many others, has been a simple “yes.�? And the “experiment�? has been taken largely as demonstrating that the humanities - or at least some sectors of it - have become corrupted

Hollywood’s transnational appeal: Hegemony and democratic potential?

The popular appeal of Hollywood\u27s products across the world invokes a complex history of globalization, nationalism, representation, and popular imagination. Although the question of Hollywood\u27s global appeal is commonplace among scholars of transnational economy and culture, most accounts fail to address the complex political dynamics at the juncture of the nationalism of local film industries and the transnationalization of Hollywood. We take up the common assertions of Hollywood\u27s economic and cultural dominance to argue that Hollywood\u27s transnationalism can be viewed more adequately as a hegemonic struggle constructing a commercially mediated “democratic subject position.” We propose an alternative account of Hollywood\u27s transnational popularity articulated to both democratic and antidemocratic politics. © 1999 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Escaping into the world of make-up routines in Iran

Traditionally, and as a result of cultural turn's emphasis on identity, Iranian women's use of dress and make-up has been an arena – sometimes a battleground – for identity negotiation. The present study questions the current over-emphasis on identity and the prevalent tendency to look for identity meanings in the use of hejab (veiling) and cosmetics. The results of fifteen interpretive in-depth interviews with young adult women in Iran reveal that these individuals' make-up practices are largely associated with a total immersion in the experiential, creative aspects of make-up use and with ways to uplift their tired spirits in a monotonous environment. Make-up routines provide these women with opportunities to escape from boredom and immerse themselves in the playful fantasies of the world of cosmetics. Despite facing various challenges, including frequent stigmatisation on account of their use of make-up, the informants in the study derive high levels of satisfaction from their make-up practices. The study establishes that changing socio-cultural dynamics give rise to new forms of consumption experiences in contemporary society and calls for further investigation of such experiences in women's everyday lives