This article was a fabricated pastiche of contemporary theoretical jargon, which suggested that, among other things, the teaching of science and mathematics should be "purged of its authoritarian and elitist characteristics, and the content of these subjects enriched by incorporating the insights of the feminist, queer, multiculturalist and ecological critiques 1 ". Sokal later collaborated with Jean Bricmont, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Louvain in Belgium, in a book-length critique of what they termed "postmodern philosophers' abuse of science", published in French in 1997, in English a year later. Entitled Intellectual Impostures 2 , this book contained only a very brief discussion of Lyotard, whole chapters on Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, but nothing substantial on Lévi-Strauss or Barthes, Foucault or Derrida. Sokal and Bricmont's main target was the supposedly widespread notion among English-speaking devotees of French theory that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration'or a 'social construction', among many others 3 ". By citing these postmodern theorists as intellectual imposters, these writers were making the point that there were correct and, in their view, incorrect ways of commenting on contemporary socio-political and cultural events, and whether one agrees with this or not, what is taken for granted by Sokal and Bricmont is that there is a need to define and analyse the contribution of these intellectual imposters and to demonstrate why they are imposters. The core point seems to be that by transposing the disciplinary and hermeneutical modes from literary analysis to that of science, these intellectuals are imposters as their level of knowledge is not commensurate with the disciplines involved. It is an attempt to regulate the contributions of intellectuals within the French public sphere, and to analyse the role of the intellectual therein.
