Absurdity vs. Social Critique

Sokal submitted a parody to *Social Text* — pure absurdity, "brimming with non sequiturs" — and it was published as serious social critique. Baudrillard, writing a decade earlier, had already described exactly this trap: "Simulation is infinitely more dangerous than transgression, since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation." The hoax was supposed to expose the absurdity of postmodern critique, but it inadvertently proved Baudrillard's thesis — you cannot simulate a violation without becoming one, because there is no "objective" difference between the parody and the thing parodied. Delany, from yet another angle, noted that politically dangerous fiction requires aesthetic risk, not adventure-story resolution; the comfortable forms neutralize critique into entertainment. What emerges from the triangle is this: absurdity doesn't oppose social critique — it *is* social critique's operating system, and the only question is whether anyone in the room knows the machine is running.