A Quick One While The Coffee Brews
…And here’s another thing. Yes. It might be important to consider that the intellectual clubbiness and involution within the humanities that was exposed, as his champions not-unjustly claim, by Sokal and his Alan Sokal Project,* was in a certain regard pre-caricatured by the clubbiness and consanguinity of Social Text itself. The journal was indeed a very social text.
But let me illustrate. I was pleasantly surprised one day in 1996, in New York, to run into Elaine Scarry on the street, and as a quick round of cocktails led to another, and so forth, we found ourselves at the loft of Bruce Robbins, the Social Text editor, who must then have been in the process of commissioning the Sokal piece. A cry came from above. “Bath time!” yelled other-editor Andrew Ross, actually (and I mean ‘actually’ in the literal sense) sliding into Robbins’s apartment on a bat pole, wearing nothing but a towel. “Oh, pardon me,” he said, hieing himself off to the hot tub shared by the two bachelors. An attractive young woman with tattoos slid down after him, and the duo closed the door after themselves. There came a sound of water running.
“He lives upstairs from you?” I asked. “He’s like my sitcom neighbor,” Robbins explained. “Or vice versa!” came a shout from the tub.
More later after I finish drafting this monograph on Veselovsky. Russian is a slow-go in the morning, and the blamed thing is due at 3 this afternoon, along with a sample chapter of the next book (about which more anon).
*”I am the maker of rules/ Dealing with fools/ I can cheat you blind” (Alan Parsons Project – ‘Eye in the Sky’)
Once I almost killed John Sallis, Continental philosopher/scholar of ancient philosophy by running him down trying to get to his lecture on time. I also almost killed Alisdair MacIntyre at the APA by slamming him with a door (he was on the other side as I opened it and there was no window).
I kinda wish I could’ve put on my CV:
Important philosophers killed or wounded:
J. Sallis
A. MacIntyre
P.S. Neither of them were accompanied by comely young women with tatoos, as far as I could tell.
Well, Bob, at least you are spreading your reign of terror equally amongst the continental and analytic camps!
Apros pos of nothing – peoplepolitical.org – is no longer.
Ha ha, so funny.
I was wondering why my Microsoft Word cv template had an extra section for “maimed rivals”.
This is really eerie. It’s like you were there that day! Bruce has a wife and kids, OK, but the batpole thing is very real, and very fun.
And hey, didn’t the Alan Parsons Project have a “laser”?
OK, how long is this bizarre parallel universe thingy going to go on? You are going to blogswap back to normal (whatever that is) when this stupid competition is over, right? Right?
It’s only a today-thing, CG.
[It’s working!]
MB, I didn’t know you’d worked on Velikovsky. Talk about your worlds in collision!
–Sigh.– I’m working on Veselovsky, Sean, not Velikovsky. You know, the developmental psychologist Veselovsky guy. Also played left wing for Detroit from 1993 to 1997.
Well, I have to admit I did enjoy reading your blog, Michael. I guess I never would have wandered over there if the guys hadn’t pulled this switcheroo. BTW, ‘Worlds in Collision’ rocks!
oops…wrong guy! Oh well…
J?rgen Habermas once rudely cut in front of me in line for coffee at a conference….does that count for anything?
A feminist literary critic whose name rhymes with FUBAR was asking a circle of toadying graduate students about their research interests at an after-party for a talk she’d given, and then turned to me and asked me to get her a cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the party in the kitchen.
But hey, I’m not bitter, or anything.
My humor is too subtle for the Inter Net.
I know exactly what you mean, Sean. But you know what? On the Inter Net no one can hear you scream about Steve Fuller.
I once urinated next to Edward Said. Who was also urinating, appropriately enough. I piss you not. I chose not to interrupt his moment of relief. For which he seemed relieved, since he zipped up so relievedly.
Be careful not to stand next to Steve Fuller; he’ll pee on your shoe, then tell you it’s raining.
You should see Fuller go after he has Mexican, not only is up down…