Katha Pollitt in Free Inquiry

[James Farmelant]

Today I just received in the mail the Winter issue of Free Inquiry
magazine and I saw a reprint of her column from the September 20
issue of The Nation,  "Weirding Out on Creationism" which quite
rightly deplores the decision by the Kansas Board of Education
to eliminate the teaching of evolution from its curriculum
requirements.  Katha furthermore deplores the way so much
of the political establishment has rolled over to the demands
of the Religious Right on this issue so that we have had both
Goerge W. and Al Gore saying that the issue of teaching
evolution is a matter that is best left to local school boards
and the way that so many of the media pundits have either
refrained from criticizing it or in some cases have actually
embraced this as a good thing.

Katha also makes the important point that the debate on
creationism versus evolution raises the same philosophical
and epistemological issues that the academic debate over
postmodernism raises.  Many of the people on the right
and the center who a few years back praised Alan Sokal
for his hoaxing of Social Text and for exposing the hollowness
of the pomos have been silent or even supportive of the
Kansas education board's decision.  Both the pomos and
the creationists reject the idea of the "master narrative"
of science based on reason and evidence in favor of the
ideas that "truth" is social and political in nature.
(BTW Meera Nanda has written how pomo which was originally
introduced into India by leftwing intellectuals has been eagerly
taken up by rightwing Hindus).

I also noticed that Katha is starting with the Spring 2000 issue
to be a regular columnist for Free Inquiry.  I take it that Katha
will no longer be recycling old Nation columns there  -:).

Jim Farmelant

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