Live data from Hacker News

The Provocations of Camille Paglia

city-journal.org

11–20 of 171 posts

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#11
post #6
post #4

"Behind that devotion to heterodoxy lies something softer. She admitted that she’s chosen to censor herself in front of her students [...] I don’t want to upset them. The historical material is too painful for a music class,” she said." I don't know if this is representative of the current times, but sad if so.

Her primary goal is to teach the students. You don't serve a novice mechanic well by asking them to build a Formula 1 racing engine from scratch on their first day in the machine shop. She's not saying that material is not worthy of study, clearly she thinks it is because she did teach it in class previously. She just found that the material didn't provide the best platform for education in the subject relevant to th…

[deleted]

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#12
Paglia is a force of nature. It's so exhilarating to come across such a passionate yet clear-sighted academic, battle scarred by exposure of her past misconceptions to the brutality of testing in the real world, and with such a stronger voice for it.

I know he's just as much of a divisive figure, but there's a great video of a conversation between Paglia and Jordan Peterson on Youtube.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#13
>" In the early 1970s, as she was finishing her doctoral course work, a new school of literary studies gained its first U.S. foothold at Yale and would eventually overthrow New Criticism as the main way academics would interpret texts in English departments across the country. "

It sounds as if she resents having the text interpretation methodology she spent a lot of time learning become irrelevant so quickly

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#14
Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book:

In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.

What does this really mean? Does it mean anything? I find it truly hard to say with any precision. If anyone is trying to make language destroy itself it is Paglia with her vague, circular, name-dropping arguments. If the rest of the book then tried to justify these assertions that'd be ok, but it continues in the same vein for hundreds of pages.

If you accept her vitriolic and reductive definitions of these interesting thinkers (Lacan, Foucault, Derrida), you are doing yourself a disservice.

Foucault to take one example is far from cheap cynicism and more rigorous and accessible than Paglia in every sense. Where is the cheap cynicism in The order of things (les mots et les choses) or Madness and Civilisation? These are really important works about issues that will be studied in 100 years, unlike Paglia's empty posturing. They're asking questions like What is normal? What is madness and how does the definition change? Questions which were ahead of their time and still vital and interesting today.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#15
post #5

“These minor French theorists have had a disastrous effect on American education. Lacan encourages pompous bombast and Foucault teaches cheap cynicism, while Derrida’s aggressive method, called deconstruction, systematically trashes high culture by reducing everything to language and then making language destroy itself.” She's right, but it really upsets many academics for someone to say that. Good.

Have you read any of them?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#16
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think her analysis is wrong in that regard. American puritanism is more to blame. French universities do not suffer from the current campus hysteria.

Are Lacan, Foucault and Derrida the pre-eminent influences on modern French academic literary theory? If so, why does she characterise them as minor?

Foucault and Derrida are certainly still read widely (and deservedly so IMO) - more widely than Paglia in Europe at least - describing them as 'minor' is a little silly. You don't have to accept everything they say to see that they have some relevance and value.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#17
post #9
post #5

“These minor French theorists have had a disastrous effect on American education. Lacan encourages pompous bombast and Foucault teaches cheap cynicism, while Derrida’s aggressive method, called deconstruction, systematically trashes high culture by reducing everything to language and then making language destroy itself.” She's right, but it really upsets many academics for someone to say that. Good.

And anyone who wants to know a bit more about some of these theorists might want to read 'Intellectual Impostures' by the Left-leaning physicist Alan Sokal.

And Fools, Frauds and Firebrands by Roger Scruton.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#18

Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…

Actually, the quote sounds like a profoundly wise thing to say. Anyone who has ever noticed in him/herself that sexual fantasies are not necessarily very political correct should know this. E.g., rape fantasies as either the perpetrator or the victim occur in large percentages of the population.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#19

Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…

I’m not that familiar with her work. But my understanding is that when disciplines like gender studies were being formed they completely ignored biology and nature.in fact there were no biologists in the gender studies departments. And she was one of the first people to suggest that we must study gender with a basis in biology.

This is what she may be referencing in the passage you quoted.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#20
post #18

Camille Paglia is over-rated IMO. I've read a couple of her books and there is little of substance there under the gnomic bombast and pseudo-academic jargon. An example from the start of her most famous book: In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our a…

Actually, the quote sounds like a profoundly wise thing to say. Anyone who has ever noticed in him/herself that sexual fantasies are not necessarily very political correct should know this. E.g., rape fantasies as either the perpetrator or the victim occur in large percentages of the population.

I agree it sounds wise (something she works very hard at), but is it wise?

On reading the rest of the book, I concluded no. You make up your own mind, but I would not dismiss those other writers because of a criticism from Paglia.

Post reply on HN