Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword

Alas, the editors of Social Text have discovered that my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in Social Text #46/47, is a parody. In view of the important intellectual and political issues raised by this episode, I have written this (nonparodic) Afterword, in which I explain my motives and my true views.’ One of my goals is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the left between humanists and natural scientists—” two cultures” that contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group) are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.

Like the genre it is meant to satirize— myriad exemplars of which can be found in my reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (S...