I usually love a good rousing challenge from the opposition, yet unfortunately Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s “Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science” especially in the section on Deleuze and Guattari, comes out feeling like misplaced stabs at not only intellectual rigor, but the actual intelligence of Deleuze and Guattari.
What is most disturbing is that through the entire preface and introduction they claim how they want to save academic students and faculty from placing weight on pompous, misguided pseudo-scientific prose. Shockingly, they really believe that the work of Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze, and others is out intellectual fashionability. It is purposefully constructed to confuse by means of obscurity or high philosophical jargon, that when read, if not understood by the reader the blame is placed on their inability to understand, and not the fault of the writer.
“We fail to see the advantage of invoking, even metaphorically, scientific concepts that one oneself understands only shakily when addressing a readership composed almost entirely of non-scientists. Might the goal be to pass off as profound a rather banal philosophical or sociological observation, by dressing it up in fancy scientific jargon?” (11).
Perhaps the real problem can relate to the issue we discussed before on the formulation of new theories and concepts. This is particularly interesting due to the fact:
1.) Within the book Sokal and Bricmont are most unforgiving to the work of Deleuze and Guattari.
2.) The work that they attack most viciously is, “What is Philosophy?”
Essentially, the scientists ask if one is to use terms from quantum mechanics, chaos theory, etc. then there must be explanation for its purpose in relation to the argument.
“The authors quoted in this book clearly do not have more than the vaguest understanding of the scientific concepts they invoke and, most importantly, they fail to give any argument justifying the relevance of these scientific concepts to the subjects allegedly under study. They are engaged in name-dropping, not just faulty reasoning. Thus, while it is very important to evaluate critically the uses of mathematics in the social sciences and the philosophical or speculative assertions made by natural scientists, these projects are different from–and considerably more subtle than–our own” (15).
Ultimately, the larger question at hand can be proposed as such:
If philosophy is to use ideas and terminology from other discourses i.e. (Science, Mathematics, etc.) to what extent should philosophers, psychoanalysts, or linguists be responsible for the “correctness” required of that original field? Especially when Deleuze is fighting against grounding thought to such limitations as, A = B because it correlates to my argument in such a way, which therefore proves…
Would addressing these scientific references in a more formulaic and definitive manner negate a rhizomaic approach? Does a more explanatory clarity start to approach linearity?
According to S&B they strictly believe in citing relevance:
“ We would respond, first of all, that when concepts from mathematics or physics are invoked in another domain of study, some argument ought to be given to justify their relevance. In all the cases cited here, we have checked that no such argument is provided, whether next to the excerpt we quote or elsewhere in the article or book“ (9).
I will add more later, but I wanted to see if anyone has any thoughts on the issue.
Before I go, I’ll make my Zizek plug and walk away. His latest book, In Defense of Lost Causes has been called by the Village Voice, “the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus”. Something to consider.
