THE SOKAL AFFAIR - CULTURAL-STUDIES AND RELATIVIST SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCES

In 1994, Alan D. Sokal, professor of physics at New York University, s ubmitted to the co-editors of the North-American university review Soc ial text an article entitled a ''Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity''. Published in Apri l 1996 in a special issue on the ''Sciences' war''. this article was g iven unexpected acclaim due to the revelations made by the author: an article which the co-editors of Social text took to be just an ordinar y contribution, in fact turned out to be a parody aimed at denouncing the lack of intellectual rigour for a notable part of the American aca demic community. When the ''Sokal Affair'' crossed the Atlantic toward s the end of 1996. it immediately brought up the problem of modalities of sociological investigations when using scientific practice and kno wledge as subject. This article lines up the precise order of events a nd relates on the connections between Cultural studies and the traditi on of sociology and scientific knowledge in order to finally analyse t he way in which this discipline must both think with and go beyond the equivocalities of ''cognitive relativism''.