Starck is a grossly overrated designer who fell in with a fast, slick crowd that know about nitelife, but little about architecture. He is a very minor talent with a penchant for exceedingly uncomfortable and unattractive furniture, but interesting lavatories. I am most embarrassed to admit that I was not familiar with this controversy. Naturally, I looked it up on the Internet and was amused to find that Sokal taught at New York University, where I studied philosophy. I skimmed through about 20 articles on the controversy and found it fairly amusing, though not revolutionary.
Academics deserve a ribbing from time to time as do journalists, both tabloid and serious.
I am also tempted to think that Sokal might have been a bit disingenuous in his original deception and planned from the start to make a cause celebre out of the controversy. I have not read Derrida who clearly made an important and timely point that what writers write is not necessarily the only means by which to judge them. I do not personally fall into the Post Modernist camp. I care almost exclusively about concepts and principles and facts rather than cultural implications and alienations. It all smacks of political correctness, which, unfortunately, has overtaken America for the past decade or so, although recent debates about affirmative action programs indicates that political correctness may, thankfully, be on the wane.