Some Lies are Bigger Than Others
Day 2/365
1996 was a tumultuous year in academia. As a hoax, NYU Professor of Physics, Alan Sokal, submitted an intentionally obtuse and overtly ridiculous article to the social and cultural academic journal, Social Text. Sokal’s piece, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” was published in their summer issue titled “Science Wars.” If that sounds like highfalutin argle-bargle, that’s because it is. In a near-impenetrable word salad of contemporary post-structuralist jargon, Sokal argued that there was scientific evidence that quantum physics itself was a social construct. Social Text had not sought peer-review from scientists and presented his article as legitimate academic work. When Sokal revealed in the journal Lingua Franca that his article had been a ruse to expose the scholarly failings of the post-structuralist left, the academy was set aflame.
For a year and a half, the battle brewed and rancor grew until, the post-structuralists in a fit of furious condemnation, held an event called “Left Conservatism: A Workshop.” On Saturday, January 31, 1998, in room 240 in College 8 at UC Santa Cruz, noted academics laid bare an intellectual power struggle that ended up unfairly distilled into an anti-intellectual caricature in the pages of Time Magazine. (Interestingly, among featured participants such as Wendy Brown and Judith Butler was also renowned Professor of English from Notre Dame Joseph Buttigieg, the father of Mayor Pete. But I digress.)
I transferred to UC Santa Cruz to complete my BA in history in 1996. For two years I had wonderful professors who were as renowned for their outstanding scholarship as they were their pedagogical acumen and dedication to teaching. In contrast to the common tropes about the pointlessness of a humanities degree, what I learned in those two years has informed my worldview and thoroughly enriched my life. I took every intellectual history course offered by Jonathan Beecher, who had been awarded the Ordre des Palmes Académique for his biography of pre-Marxist socialist Charles Fourier. I took three courses from world-renowned Soviet Historian, Peter Kenez. I took a course on Hannah Arendt and read all of her major works. I took social and cultural history courses, a historiography course, and became determined to pursue a career as an academic. While that wasn’t the path I ultimately followed, I have spent the last 21 years contemplating the material I learned there. In it, I still find enormous meaning.
During the winter quarter of 1998, I had professors connected to both sides of the fight. Barbara Epstein was a close friend of Sokal’s and had edited his article revealing the hoax in Lingua Franca. At the same time, I was taking a class in modern Chinese women’s history from Gail Hershatter who co-directed the Center for Cultural Studies that had sponsored that inflammatory workshop. I never chose sides. I thought the world of both professors and was mystified and disappointed by the animosity between their camps (though, to be clear, neither of them ever spoke a harsh word about any faculty). It contributed in no small part to my decision to drop out of graduate school at the University of Chicago after just 10 weeks the following fall. I never returned.
I’ve thought a lot about some of the ideas that were rattling around campus in the time since. None of which resonated more with me and better summarized the fight that had boiled over that January than something shared with me by Professor Hershatter (who insisted it wasn’t her own). “Just because there’s no truth with a capital ‘T’,” she said, “doesn’t mean some lies aren’t bigger than others.” I’ve wrestled with this statement for two decades and I doubt I’m done with it.
Today, I believe there is a truth with a capital “T.” I believe that there are physical laws that govern our universe and that science brings us ever closer to understanding them. I believe in objective reality but I also believe that as humans we may never fully get the straight dope on this objective world. Nonetheless, I believe there is nobility in pursuing it.
Our view of the world is incomplete and our understanding limited. What each of us knows of the world is thoroughly distorted by our genetics, our personal experiences, and the social and cultural values that inform the most basic meaning of the words we use to describe it. As I make my way through life searching for meaning and purpose, I have found no greater scale for weighing mendacity than the powerful idea that indeed, some lies are bigger than others. This, paradoxically, is likely as close as I’ll ever get to Truth.
Oh, hello! Welcome to the second installment of my 365-day project. I’ve decided to write a minimum of two paragraphs a day for the next year. I’ll post what I write online. When I succeed and when I fail, it will be terrifyingly public, discoverable by anyone who cares to look. I plan to write about my past: familial relationships, emotional trials, joyfulness, discovery, and my reckless youth. I’m fascinated by history, political philosophy, language, and culture; I’m deeply concerned about democracy and this political moment; I have strong feelings about both the technology sector and the business world in which I work — all fodder for this gnashing beast of a project that I’m throwing myself into.