Falling on My Sword - Sort Of

At least 14 years ago, possibly more, I had an argument with the author of Executive Orc House about either the word “holocaust” or the word “apartheid”. I can’t remember which word it was but the word had been used in a Vanity Fair article to apply either to the conditions under which Muslim women live or the conditions under which Palestinians live in Israel. JFB’s position was that those words have specific meaning relating, respectively, to the conditions under which Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis and to the conditions under blacks suffered at the hands of whites in South Africa, and that they could not be bandied about to apply to just any situation of oppressiveness. I said words of that power SHOULD be applied to other occasions of oppression to import their meaning and give gravitas to newer situations of oppression.

In the past 14 years, “we” (not JFB and I, but culture generally) have struggled with how to name oppressive regimes, but generally holocaust and apartheid have stayed off limits, per J. “Genocide” is used now.

A back-and-forth with another reader about the word “transubstantiation” (from the last post) reminded me of this discussion. Here’s why. I have always understood transubstantiation to have only one meaning: the theological meaning. That bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ. You can mock it as concept, but I never thought the word had any other meaning. It turns out it also means “changing one substance to another.” Who knew? So then why this flash back to 1994, sitting in the lobby of the Shoreland, waiting for the campus bus, getting heated and pissy about a Vanity Fair article? Because I thought, “Some words have only one meaning, even if they in fact have other meanings. G--D--- it.” Doh. I thought JFB deserved an apology after all these years. Its just as easy to say “change one substance to another” as it is to say “transubstantiation”, if that is all you mean. The T word seems reserved for its ecclesiastical meaning, not its alchemical meaning. Big ups, JB.

Also I agree that hardcore is tough to take now that we are old. Ska doesn’t hold up too well, either, sad to say (but you probably aren’t sad to hear).