[xoz123]

Blown away by this article, thank you. I hadn't thought of the Sokal affair in ages but I remember when it happened and how gleeful everyone was in making fun of the journal at the time. To think that the author and journal co-editor at the time would wind up working together as early advocates for Palenstinian rights is an incredible plot twist.

[appreciatorBus]

Is it that much of a plot twist? It’s possible for more than one thing to be true at once – that postmodernist nonsense deserves to be mocked and belittled, and that Palestinians deserve rights.

[photonthug]

Not OP, but I think the plot twist is, maybe we need to be able to entertain "obviously absurd" ideas to be able to land on a correct position if the culture we're inside of is not ready for those ideas yet. (No idea if the journal was really that early on this particular position though)

Crucially, entertaining ideas isn't the same as believing them, it's about giving them some time and space so you can work out whether it's consistent, rich, useful. Even in math this stuff is hard to get right, just look at the resistance and ridicule that Cantor had to go through, or look at the development of non-Euclidean geometry. And that's a space where proof is actually possible. Critical theory is a real thing but is always walking this fine line between being nonsense or being revolutionary.

[Cheer2171]

> early advocates for Palenstinian rights

Early? https://enwp.org/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

[tomlockwood]

Early advocates for Palestinian rights, in 1996?

Curious.

[saghm]

Yeah, this is an odd word choice. Even as someone only born in that decade, I've heard at least one case from someone directly about their advocacy from before that year; a history professor I had in college once told an anecdote during a lecture about a time he briefed the elder President Bush, who was apparently considering whether to try to pressure Israel to halt settlements on the West Bank (which the professor told us was an example of how much more attention to detail he perceived in the elder compared to his younger one when he became president). I'm sure there are plenty of people around who can recall things much earlier than this.

[meowface]

I think it's great that they were early advocates for Palestinian rights (I'm a liberal capitalist and dislike Marxism but have always been very sympathetic to the Palestinians and their cause), but, as this article states, this is a Marxist magazine. For a very long time, Marxists have been on this side. Don't see why it would be a twist.