The handsome chap at top who appears to fancy hosiery is "Andrew Ross." He is a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at the New York University and is not unknown to the undersigned.
In 1996 Andrew was part of something which Wikipedia terms the "editorial collective" of a magazine called Social Text. It was in that baleful year that Andrew first came to the attention of those beyond the captive collective of his NYU students and the tiny but "very bright" pageviewership of the worthy Social Text aforementioned, that is it was in 1996 that Andrew became something of a household name in America.
What brought Andrew into the hearthstones of millions...well maybe not millions but thousands, lots of thousands...of Americans was "The Sokal Affair." What might that be. The Sokal Affair, sometimes called the Sokal Hoax, takes its name from a colleague of Andrew's, then and now, at NYU, Alan Sokal. Professor Sokal was, then and now, resident in the Physics department. Then and now colleagues in Departments of Physics and Departments of Social and Cultural Analysis are sometimes less than collegial. That was the case in the Sokal Affair. Professor Sokal, having read a "critical mass," in physics terms, of the learned writing in Social Text came to the opinion that the editorial collective of Social Text had tweety-birds flying around in their heads. To prove the existence of this aviary Professor Sokal submitted an essay with the fetching title, Transgressing the Boundaries: Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.
Now I, Benjamin Harris, don't know what the hell that title means. Neither did Professor Sokal as it turned out because, you see, Trespassing...Transgressing...The Transsexual Transformation..., I say the article was a hoax. Professor Sokal made the whole thing up, muddying the waters in order to make them look deep. Of course, Andrew didn't know what the hell the article was about either--but he and the editorial collective published it anyway as a serious social text in Social Text and Andrew got all splashed with mud. Abandoning for the moment the polite prose in which readers are accustomed to reading the learned articles here in Public Occurrences and adopting the lingua franca of the great unwashed but un-muddied, it was all bull shit, and a shit storm of derision descended on Andrew's head. And to provide happy transformation from last sentence to this it was in the journal Lingua Franca where Professor Sokal revealed that he had made Andrew Ross his bitch.
Then in December 2008--or the 20th century fin de siecle as it might be called in Social Text--the undersigned had the privilege of traveling to New York City, home of the New York University cleverly enough, to attend this:
Please forward widelyREDISCOVERING CHINA'S
CULTURAL REVOLUTION:Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of LiberationA Weekend Symposium at Revolution Books and New York University
December 12-14, 2008
A Maoist convention. How could I resist?
The first day I remember there was an unfortunate transgression of the boundaries of the auditorium sound system's capabilities which caused a delay but more memorably a transformation in the blood pressure of the Master of Ceremonies, one "Andrew Zee," owner of Revolution Books, sponsor of all this erudition, which transformation transgressed healthy blood pressure levels. "Andy," as he was called by his comrades was much discomposed by this malfunction and before I had fully realized its seriousness I had made bold to mount the stage with my own tape recorder so that I could perpetuate in perpetuity the goings-on. A comrade, seeing that my intrusion might push Andy "over the edge," somewhat severely advised me to dismount the stage. Which I did.
I repositioned myself in a seat among my unwashed brethren and sistren (sistren?) in the auditorium. And I glanced through the program. I read through the list and resumes of the panelists and saw:
Andrew Ross-- Professor of American Studies, Chair of Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; author of Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor; articles on China include "Mao Zedong's Impact on Cultural Politics in the West."
Andrew Ross, Andrew Ross, who the hell is Andrew Ross. I know that name from somewhere...Steve Ross, no...wait a minute...I got on my cellphone. I googled. Then I giggled.
It's been over two years now and I don't have my notes with me as I write this so I cannot be certain but I am pretty sure that Ross was not the first speaker. I had taken an aisle seat. Seats, whether in auditoriums (auditoria?), theaters, airplanes, or like that are designed for people of average leg length and I, like the residents of Lake Woebegone, am "above average" in this regard, if in no other. This data on my physical...dimensionality... is provided solely for the purpose of elucidating something of my physiognomy for it happened that the aisle seat I chose was cheek-by-jowl with the lighting system for the stage which I had just been unceremoniously booted from. I'm pretty sure that Ross was not the first speaker because of course there were breaks during the day and my memory is that it was during a break that a comrade asked me to assist the smooth-flowing of the erudition by manning these stage lights.
In his insouciance, the comrade had made an unfortunate choice in me.
All I had to do, the comrade explained, to make sure it wasn't "over my head," was flick the light switch when the lights needed to be turned on, and then flick it the other way ("That's 'off,'" he articulated helpfully) when the recorded portion of the erudition was done and questions were taken from the audience. It was after this instruction and now burdened with this task, that I keenly listened as Andrew took the mic.
I can report that although the sound system was repaired in fairly short order there remained a persistent problem the remainder of the day with the lights, which flicked on and off at the wrong times, causing momentary distraction on stage and momentary consternation on Andy Zee's face. I reveal for the first time here that the cause of this annoying malfunction was definitely "human error." I can further report that Ross, so stage-disciplined, or so wrapped up in the sound of his own voice, was completely unfazed. I think I could have set off my fart machine with the volume on high and Ross would never have noticed.
The only thing I remember now (no notes) is his conclusion: "Let's bury neo-liberalism once and for all. And make sure we don't bury it in a shallow grave." At which point the audience broke into loud applause, the lights strobed inexplicably, and the members of the audience made up of ladies who wear sensible shoes squealed with their first orgasms.(1)
(1) I anticipate one or two readers may be thinking, "Why now?" "Why are you writing about this now?" Alas, my to-do list is a long one and I never got around to it. Today however I got on Arts & Letters Daily and there was a blurb that began, "Alan Sokal's 1996 hoax," and that's all the reason there is. Gonna miss you, Denis.
