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The Provocations of Camille Paglia

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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#81

Post by dlkf »

raverbashing wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: 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.

While no idea is impervious to criticism, I think Americans take those authors much more "serious" (as in their ideas as "hard truths") than them themselves take it (in France). So her criticism might be right in substance (in the American context) but targeting the wrong thing. Derrida is pretty much Gödel's incompleteness theorem for philosophers instead of just "reducing everything to language and then making lang…

Gödel's incompleteness theorem is Gödel's incompleteness theorem for philosophers. Derrida is fashionable nonsense.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#82

Post by sprafa »

Glide wrote: post #68
_iyig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The main thing for me was I rarely if ever see Peterson smile. Where do you usually look for his smile? In footage of high-pressure media interviews and public debates? In the photos carefully selected by the editors of whichever news sites you browse? Could be he just likes meeting fans, and is amused by a goofy cartoon frog. See also: Hong Kong protestors’ use of Pepe, and prevalence of the meme among less politic…

It’s sad to see people fall for guilt by association. In most interviews that Jordan Peterson has when he talks about meeting his fans is when he sounds the happiest. This really is what Scott Adams talks about with two movies and one screen. The interpretation of events speaks more about the interpreters rather than the actual events now.

This is not guilt by association. He didn’t happen to be around when they took the photo, he’s clearly enjoying having the Pepe flag in it.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vkSEmNoqhZY/maxresdefault.jpg

I wasn’t going to mention it because sometimes I think it’s just 4chan trying to have a laugh by making everything appear controversial, but the guy on the left is doing a pseudo white nationalist symbol (even though again, I’ve heard it’s not, but sometimes yes? I don’t know everything is confusing now.)

I judge people by their actions as much as their words. And this, to me, is a very strange photo.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#84

Post by cygx »

emsy wrote: post #77
cygx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nurture can trump nature, though: There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. As is often the case, it's not simply either/or.

"Considered a feminine trait" is nurtured. Whether it is a feminine trait or not is nature and should be derived from observation.

That wasn't the best phrasing on my part. Quoting the abstract[1]:

We use a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasaiin Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these societies is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society, whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. Similar to the extant evidence drawn from experiments executed in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed among the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men.

[1] https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/gend...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#85

Post by cygx »

depressedpanda wrote: post #65
cygx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nurture can trump nature, though: There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. As is often the case, it's not simply either/or.

> There are matrilineal societies where competitiveness is considered a feminine trait. Never heard this before. Could you list some examples?

The Khasi people of north-eastern India often get cited as an example:

https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/gend...

See the comment by obviuosly for some caveats.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#86

Post by lordgrenville »

Animats wrote: 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.

I wouldn't group all of those three together. My personal opinion is:

-Foucault is quite interesting and accessible (his writing contains much more facts and observations than jargon)

-Lacan is a complete fraud

-Derrida might have interesting things to say but it's extremely hard to tell

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#87

Post by akhilcacharya »

Hitton wrote: post #39

You can disagree with Camille Paglia's ideas, but one must respect her for her integrity and commitment to honest academic debate, which is sadly lacking nowadays in most western universities.

> sadly lacking nowadays in most western universities.

Where do we still have "honest academic debate" then?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#88

Post by 0-_-0 »

sprafa wrote: post #36

Peterson lost a lot of credibility for me when he took a group selfie with some guys with a big Pepe The Frog flag. I mean it’s kind of funny but 90% of the Pepe memes are actually racist and horrible (from what I’ve seen). After that I couldn’t take his alt-right denialism very seriously. It’s a shame because I actually think some of his talks are quite good.

He probably takes pictures with hundreds of fans after each talk. Taking a picture with a random fan having a frog flag is not an endorsement of nazism.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#89

Post by lordgrenville »

cdavid wrote: post #75
vixen99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putting all the "French philosophers" in one bucket is not fair. Lacan is clearly a charlatan, Foucault, while controversial, is absolutely a deep thinker. There is some truth about their writing being too obtuse, but this is (was ?) unfortunately a requirement in some circles in Paris. Also, culturally, being pedant in French has been for a long time a sign of sophistication culturally speaking ( http://www.opencult…

Great link. It's amusing that the url Frenchifies him to "Jean Searle" (although the text gets his name right).

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#90

Post by DataWorker »

namirez wrote: post #57
Animats wrote: 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.

> She's right, but it really upsets many academics for someone to say that. Good. Is it "good" just because it upsets academics? Is she "right" just because you agree with her? To me, her comment sounds like a very uncharitable critique of those writers. I'm not a fan of Derrida or Lacan, but I've noticed they get a lot of criticism from people who've never read them. They were not necessarily original thinkers with…

“Offered some new insights” seems innocuous enough. I don’t think you’ll find such modesty in the claims these writers make. Despite the ostentatious self aggrandizement inherent in their critiques of our intellectual and cultural traditions, the best defense any honest person can offer for their work is a backstepping timid “they offered some new insights”. Well the newness of their insights is debatable. Listen to any child’s tantrum and you’ll hear echos of foucault’s whining about the unfairness of power.
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