Saturday, 09 July 2005

hymnicide

nonce-wd.

The 'murdering' of a hymn, i.e. by alteration or performance. 

1989  Otis Redding Fan Club President-For-Life, Upon Hearing Michael Bolton's "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay" HYMNICIDE!  1999 Axl Rose, Upon Hearing Sheryl Crow's "Sweet Child of Mine" HYMNICIDE!  2001 Joan Jett, Upon Hearing Britney Spears "I Love Rock And Roll" HYMNICIDE!  2002 Nation of Ireland, Upon Hearing Johnny Cash's "Danny Boy" HYMNICIDE!  2003 Yusuf Islam, nee Cat Stevens, Upon Hearing Sheryl Crow's "First Cut Is The Deepest" HYMNICIDE!  2005 Sheryl Crow, Upon Not Ever Hearing Anyone Cover Any Of Her Crap Songs Hymnicide?  Somebody?  Anybody?

Jul 9, 2005 4:03:00 AM | Redefined

1 Comment

badger

Duran Duran's cover of Public Enemy's "9-11 is a joke" -- hymnicide

Posted by: badger | Sunday, 10 July 2005 at 10:33 AM

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Evolutionary Ideology, or the Stuff of Shuddering Via La Lecturess (herself via Inside Higher Ed) or via The Panda's Thumb: Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, "a theologian who is close to Pop Benedict XVI," is "redefining" the Church's position on evolutionary theory in the New York Times' Op-Ed pages. According to Schonborn--whose names bears an umlaut over the second "o" which Typepad refuses to register--while evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true ... evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense--an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection--is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science. Where to begin? With the appropriation of humanistic rhetoric against the sciences? Why not. I've read Sandra Harding and know that the critique of the science studies in general, and feminist science studies in particular, is often misplaced. I have no patience with the anti-realist social constructivist position in its strong form, but I recognize that its weak form speaks to a general truth: namely, that to maintain the cultural, historical, sexual or even individual contingency of all claims to knowledge doesn't ipso facto deny of the possibility of accurate or objective reckonings of the world.* I know that. Am on board. With the program. But I recognize that Sandra Harding causes problems when she says stuff like: the Third World forms of democratic, pacific, life-maintaining, and communal tendencies so at odds with the imperialistic, violent, consuming, and possessively individualistic ones that critics find in Western sciences and culture. (Obviously the former are not always well practiced in Third World cultures prior to the expansion into them of European culture, nor are they absent from First World cultures, as the postcolonial critics are perfectly aware and as they always caution.) The result would be many, culturally different sciences, each with culturally diverse origins--but central among the elements most valued in each case would be those that advance cooperation, democracy, the richness of indigenous achievements, and sustainable development. Advocating the creation of "culturally different sciences"--removing, even momentarily, the strong materialist claims subtending the better work in science studies--puts into the hands of those who would disembowel science of everything scientific the rhetoric of self-marginalization the good Cardinal employs. Evolutionary theory, the culture of the Catholic Church can argue, is a misnomer. What we as Catholics oppose is the ideology of evolutionary theory imposed upon us by a secular scientific community. The call for a feminist, post-modern or post-colonial science could (and has) slipped silently into a call for post-scientific science. Given the general tenor of the contemporary scene, frankly I'm frightened by the idea that a prominent Cardinal can publish an anti-evolutionary editorial in "The Newspaper of Record" and expect it to be taken seriously. *I may have cribbed that from somewhere. Bits of that sentence are in a notebook but I can't tell whether they're bits of my thought or bits of someone else's. So if it's plagiarism, it's unintentional and I apologize, profusely, in advance....

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