Varoufakis on Postmodernism.

or Why Critics of Economics Can Ill-Afford the "Postmodern Turn"

Yanis Varoufakis (Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens, and noted blogger) addressing in 2002 the then fledgling Post-Autistic Economics movement:

"It is a sad irony when the activities of dissidents help shore up the establishment they set out to subvert. The point of this piece is to warn the 'economic' dissident: Beware the Postmodern Turn! The argument will turn on the thought that postmodern criticisms of economics serve the twin purpose of (a) releasing pent-up frustration with the profession while, at once, (b) reinforcing its ideological backbone." (link)

I am sure those who have followed the output of online post-modern self-described Post-Keynesian macroeconomists (which one may, unfairly, consider representative of the PoKe collective) will find Varoufakis' article astoundingly accurate (I may have further to say on this subject in the future).

But here I wish to refer to something else. For all its merits, there is a glaring omission in Varoufakis' argument. This is curious, since he explicitly mentioned science and the postmodernist (PoMo, for short) views on it. Varoufakis left out the so-called Science Wars and perhaps its best known "battle": the Sokal Affair.

The debate between natural scientists, at one hand, and social science/humanities academics, at the other, is too lengthy to be dealt appropriately here. With the caveat that readers should exercise common sense when using Wikipedia, I'd recommend for the absolute newcomer its two related entries.

For my purposes, however, it will suffice here to show these two charts, courtesy of Google Books Ngram Viewer:

(right click to open a larger version in a separate tab)

The chart above shows how frequently the 2-word phrases "Sokal Affair" and "Social Text" (bigrams or 2-grams, in Google's terminology) have occurred in Google Books in American English, since 1975 and up to 2008 (apparently, the corpus does not include more recent books).

The publication of mathematics/physics professor Alan Sokal's prank article (delightfully titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", link) in 1996 by one of the flagship PoMo academic journals, Social Text, occurred when the journal was gaining references, acceptance and influence in the literature.

Soon after publication, Sokal revealed through another journal (Lingua Franca) that the article was, in fact, a hoax:

"I decided to try a modest ... experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies ... publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?"

Judging by the chart, Sokal's article seems to have caused little initial commotion; but as the controversy surrounding his naming and shaming of Social Text gained prominence both in academic and ordinary media (around 2000), the fortunes of Social Text changed: as of 2008, its influence was still heading south.

(right click to open a larger version in a separate tab)

The exact same phenomenon is, if anything, even more evident in the next chart, describing the broader PoMo "movement" (often seen as an umbrella term for post-structuralism, deconstructionism/deconstructivism and related "isms"): the whole PoMo bubble burst. POOF!

While it's hard to ascertain Prof. Alan Sokal's precise weight as causing agent (after all, with or without Sokal, the public was bound to eventually perceive PoMo for the sham it became), one must acknowledge his efforts and credit him for them.

As seen in the opening of this post, Varoufakis warned in 2002 heterodox economists against a "PoMo turn" because it would be theoretically counterproductive and self-defeating. Against the backdrop of the PoMo collapse, however, it's clear that it would be worse than that: it would be suicidal...

...and just plain dumb.

But dumbness has never stopped you, so, by all means, carry on.