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The Provocations of Camille Paglia

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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#21

Post by chalst »

vixen99 wrote: post #9
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.

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.

It is funny that of these three names, two were among the four explicitly exempted by Sokal and Bricmont of being impostors in a 1997 letter to Liberation following publication of the book: "Famous thinkers like Althusser, Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault are mainly absent from our book"

Orig. https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmo....

Cf. http://www.critical-theory.com/read-derridas-response-sokal-...

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#22

Post by ternaryoperator »

weiming wrote: 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.

>The historical material is too painful for a music class

And yet in the face of great suffering, music can speak when words are insufficient.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#23

Post by pjc50 »

grey-area wrote: post #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 a…

Camille Paglia is also a global warming denier, which is the sort of error that should give you cause to not only doubt everything she says but to use her as a contrarian indicator.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#24

Post by pjc50 »

But that's assuming the conclusion!

The whole point of gender studies is the idea that biology is not destiny, especially in social interaction. The roles we play and the relationships we have with each other aren't a mere clockwork expression of our chromosomes. They are far more memetic instead.

You can't point to a spot on the Y chromosome that is responsible for unequal pay.

Edit: I know it's frowned on to complain about downvotes, but would people at least try to understand what the nature and purpose of gender studies is before dismissing it?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#25

Post by honzzz »

cjfd wrote: post #18
grey-area wrote: post #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 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 have to admit that I fail to see any connection between that quote and the thing you wrote about sexual fantasies. Also, that thing about sexual fantasies... is it not obvious? Does anyone need to read a book to discover it? I might be missing something and I want to be corrected if that is the case but so far it seems like one of those cases when famous authors write something so vague or even empty that people project their own discoveries into it and get affirmative pleasure from that.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#26

Post by pjc50 »

cjfd wrote: post #18
grey-area wrote: post #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 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.

Again, the assumption that fantasies are purely natural creatures of the "id" and not products of your particular culture is assuming the conclusion.

(Mind you, I'm not sure where the cutting edge of research in this is; it's a very difficult field and it's been a long time since I read Nancy Friday)

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#27

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

pjc50 wrote: post #24

But that's assuming the conclusion! The whole point of gender studies is the idea that biology is not destiny, especially in social interaction. The roles we play and the relationships we have with each other aren't a mere clockwork expression of our chromosomes. They are far more memetic instead. You can't point to a spot on the Y chromosome that is responsible for unequal pay. Edit: I know it's frowned on to compla…

Oh yes you can: men have testosterone, so they're more aggressive, which turns out to translate to asking for more pay raises more often and changing jobs more quickly if unhappy with their pay. Hey presto, a biological basis for unequal pay. Now obviously this doesn't explain everything about unequal pay -- but it would be foolish to ignore entirely, no?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#28

Post by cygx »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #27
pjc50 wrote: post #24

But that's assuming the conclusion! The whole point of gender studies is the idea that biology is not destiny, especially in social interaction. The roles we play and the relationships we have with each other aren't a mere clockwork expression of our chromosomes. They are far more memetic instead. You can't point to a spot on the Y chromosome that is responsible for unequal pay. Edit: I know it's frowned on to compla…

Oh yes you can: men have testosterone, so they're more aggressive, which turns out to translate to asking for more pay raises more often and changing jobs more quickly if unhappy with their pay. Hey presto, a biological basis for unequal pay. Now obviously this doesn't explain everything about unequal pay -- but it would be foolish to ignore entirely, no?

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.

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#29

Post by C1sc0cat »

simonh wrote: post #6
weiming wrote: 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…

So studying the musical theory of say "strange fruit" (Meeropol) rather than including the historical context?

Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia

#30

Post by jboynyc »

rvn1045 wrote: post #19
grey-area wrote: post #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 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.

Ahem... Do you know about Anne Fasto-Sterling or Donna Haraway? They are both highly credentialed biologists and pivotal figures in the development of women's/gender studies.
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