The Provocations of Camille Paglia
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The Provocations of Camille Paglia
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Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#2Props to David Yager for standing up to the kind of people (sheltered kidults, really) Thunderf00t calls out for crybullying. The world needs more debate and engagement of controversial figures (regardless if anyone agrees with them and especially if many don't), not fascist-style/childish de-platforming.
I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. - Evelyn Beatrice Hall (not Voltaire)
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#3"The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind"
We live in interesting times. Teachers of the Paglia calibre, have become visible to larger and larger numbers of students worldwide. And that raises the bar for all those who claim to Teach.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#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.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#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.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#6"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 the students.
EDIT: Note that the reason for changing the material was not due to the students being soft. It was because "The historical material is too painful for a music class". The point of the class was to study music, not the historical context of the lyrics, so selecting such historically charged material distracted from the actual purpose of the course.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#7“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 think her analysis is wrong in that regard. American puritanism is more to blame. French universities do not suffer from the current campus hysteria.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#8“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 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?
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#9“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.
Re: The Provocations of Camille Paglia
#10"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…
I think that was precisely the point of the parent comment.