Did the Sokal affair "destroy postmodernism"?

shout-out to Bruno Latour for having his picture inexplicably thrown up with all the videos about the Sokal Affair and the "destruction of postmodernism"

That's a cool vid, but how about 'Shrek 2 - Marxist Analysis'?

I wonder how many of sokals recent fans know he considers himself ''an old fashioned socialist''.

Postmodernists and critical theorists always say : It's more complicated than that, it's more nuanced than that. Maybe the Emperor's clothes are translucent rather than absent.

I've been a long-term critic of postmodernism because I've seen it produce a great deal of impenetrable prose, while remaining frustratingly vague on its own essentials. Your videos are the best defense of it I've come across. What I'd love to see from you is a video that defines postmodern philosophy, and then explains its value to us as both individuals and as a society. Thanks!

My subjective impression is that a lot of postmodernist writing is less obscure than obscurantist. Once you fight your way through the impenetrable prose to the thoughts beneath, it's often disappointingly banal.

I know the thumbnail is a reference to the other video 'Postmodernism Destroyed Forever'. But that's not even Sokal, that's Bruno Latour. What are people smoking?

One thing to take in mind, that one of my first professor mentioned, is that you don’t need to have a good, or even knowledgeable paper, to get published.

I think even more interesting than Sokal is the Schön Scandal. This guy Jan Schön published fraudulent papers on semi-conductor physics for ~6 years while working at Bell Labs (very prestigious, birthplace of the transistor and many other technological advancements). These papers were peer reviewed, and yet he continued to get published until a couple of grad students noticed he literally copy/pasted a graph from a previous paper and falsified data. It's really disturbing bc you want to have faith in the peer review process, but at a certain point, academic work becomes so complex that it is very difficult to verify, even by experts in your field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

Man, this channel deserves way more attention than it gets. Riveting work, sir.

People who've never bothered to read Sokal's book often like to cite his name and claim he "debunked postmodernism". Sokal set out to do no such thing. By his own admission, he was only concerned with what he felt to be the misuse of scientific terms and concepts in postmodern philosophy. Which yes, postmodern thinkers tend to do. Though being familiar with Deleuze, Sokal misunderstood what he was doing. Deleuze wrote much of his work in a sort of modernist James Joyce style. He even writes in the intro to A Thousand Plateaus that you don't need to read the book chronologically. This means that he often entertained different concepts not because he felt they were true, but because they enabled one to explore knowledge from different angles. Concepts for him were sort of like Instagram filters which highlighted different aspects of the world, and that no one concept should be held up as the One Truth. However, Sokal was absolutely correct in saying Deleuze is needlessly difficult to read. Reading his prose is as unpleasant as chewing tinfoil.

You can call it "scientific metaphor", but the Postmodernists were really trying to misappropriate scientific authority through nonsensical scientific claims. Sokal showed that fairly effectively.

You have a very great point how the publishers contribute to the problem, however in the latest hoax "grievance studies" there were many peer reviews for a plethora of so called studies, which gave a very solid indication that even with peer review (some were returned for correction but then accepted) are completely bogus.

"The journal "social text" was not peer-reviewed at the time" I had to stop the video and laugh out loud.

Wonderful narration! Glad I found your video first while searching for the Sokal affair.

really great video, I've had a few people bring this up with me but its really cool to hear more about what Sokal thought about it. Most people who bring this up really seem to think it's some kind of checkmate but he himself didn't see it that way at all and that is good to know.

I defended my Bachelor's thesis in the field philosophy, it mostly covered science & technology studies issues. That thumbnail with Latour's photograph was the most personalised clickbait I've ever come across

nice video! I want to express my feeling of postmodernism. I'm not an expert of postmodernism, but in terms of my limited reading experience, I really hate postmodernism literature and various social science literature quoting them without showing accessible context. When I for the first time tried to read Deleuze's work several years ago, most of the time I can't understand his argument. I thought it's because I was inexperienced, impatient and stupid. However, after more reading, although I don't believe I have enough knowledge and wisdom to specifically accuse certain writer's work as nonsense, I think the generally low accessibility of postmodernism literature makes them SERIOUSLY SUSPICIOUS . I often wonder: how could anyone be sure about the meaning and argument of these literature? There seems no way to know for sure what do those words mean, not to mention they are often filled with fancy metaphor borrowed from other fields. In university, I saw many peers and professors using or quoting postmodernism literature without explicitly explaining them. Usually, nearly all students in the class don't understand or fully understand what they just heard, but no one asks a dang question about it. It seems that "having a vague grasp of postmodernism quote is enough for building arguments" is extensively believed and practiced. And I really really hate this phenomenon. I know its likely that I'm too biased or intellectually incompetent to change my view, but I still believe postmodernism's style of discussion and argument-buliding is harmful. It makes people believe or pretend they know something while they don't, and makes people prone to use vague phrase to justify their argument or ideology. I'm not saying I'm right and postmodernism is wrong (I'm definitely not qualified to say that). All I want to say is I understand why some people hate postmodernism and blame it for various things. Because I'm one of them.

Great video. You are a serious creator of content and can only respect that. I am sad I can’t not give you more than one thumbs up. On a different note, I have tried to watch PhilosophyInsights videos and they are painful to watch due to his naked bias for whatever Peterson is spewing. The positive consequence of Peterson being popular in certain YouTube circles and now in the media is that I have to go back and reread Foucault and Derrida and Habermas and refresh my 20th century History studies and I hope that other people do the same.

Great breakdown of the controversy. Just found your channel and love your content :)