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Contemporary Cultural Theory

in character. In short, they simply disagree with Irigaray’s version
of radical feminist politics. Similarly, when they object to her belief
that the female ‘sexual economy’ is attuned to ‘cyclic and cosmic
rhythms’, they object not to her use of science, but to her mysti-
cism per se (pp. 112–13). We are neither radical feminists nor
mystics and would readily accept the argument against a delib-
erate misuse of scientific terms. But we would add that politics
and mysticism might often be, not so much opposed to science,
as different from it.

Postmodernism and political radicalism: Sokal v. Jameson
For Sokal and Bricmont, postmodernism is symptomatic of a
disorientation of radical politics in a situation where ‘the
communist regimes have collapsed; the social-democratic parties
. . . apply watered-down neo-liberal policies; and the Third World
movements... have... abandoned any attempt at autonomous
development’ (p. 189). Hence the resort to relativism, by which
the ‘postmodern left’ unintentionally deprives itself of ‘a
powerful instrument for criticizing the existing social order’
(p. 191). Again this is a political rather than a scientific argument,
though one with which we have some sympathy. Certainly,
we have no wish to call into question their political radicalism:
even Judith Butler has acknowledged, in an article originally
published in Social Text itself, that ‘the recent efforts to parody
the cultural Left could not have happened if there were not this
prior affiliation and intimacy’ (Butler, 1999, p. 35). But we also
note how the Sokal hoax has been transformed into an icon of
conservative anti-intellectualism, no doubt against the intentions
of its author, but nonetheless with a certain grim predictability.
As Segal observed: ‘few intellectual efforts are less politically
productive, or more symptomatic of morbidity, than the attempts
. . . to defend the supposedly “real” left against a phony
“cultural” left’ (Segal, 1999, p. 224).
When Sokal came to select the target for his hoax, it was
perhaps unsurprising that the chosen journal should have been
one Jameson helped found and co-edit. Yet there was an obvious
irony in this. For if Jameson has indeed remained fascinated by

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