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The publication in France of ourbook Impostures Intellectuelles [1] appears to have created a small storm in certain intellectual circles. According to Jon Henley in The Guardian, we have shown that ``modern French philosophy is a load of oldtosh.''[2] According to Robert Maggiori inLibération, we are humourless scientistic pedantswho correct grammatical errors inlove letters.[3] We shalltry to explainherewhy neither is thecase.
Some commentatorsgo farther, attacking not our arguments but ouralleged motivations for writing thebook. Julia Kristeva, writing inLe Nouvel Observateur, accuses us of spreading ``disinformation''as part of an anti-French politico-economic campaign[4];shewas even quoted (we hope misquoted)by theItalian daily Corriere della Seraas saying that we should undergo psychiatric treatment.[5] Vincent Fleury and YunSun Limet,again inLibération, accuse us of seeking to divert research funds from the social to thenatural sciences.[6] These defences are curious: for even if our motivations were indeedasascribed (and they most certainly aren't), how would that affect the validity or invalidity of our arguments? We have the modest hope that calmerheadswill soon prevail among both our supporters and our critics, so that the debate canfocuson the substantive content of ourbook.
Which is what? Thebook grewout of the now-famous hoax in whichone of us published, in the American cultural-studies journal Social Text, a parody article chock-full of nonsensical, but unfortunately authentic, quotes about physics and mathematicsby prominent Frenchand American intellectuals.[7] However,only a small fraction of the ``dossier'' discovered during Sokal'slibrary research could be included in the parody. After showing this larger dossier to scientist and non-scientistfriends, we became (slowly) convinced thatit might be worth makingit available to a wider audience. We wanted to explain, in non-technical terms,why the quotes are absurd or, in manycases, simply meaningless; and we wanted also to discuss the cultural circumstances that enabled these discourses to achieve such prominence and to remain, thus far, unexposed. Hence ourbook, thenoise and the furore.
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