4 ms·

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.

• simonh 7y ago
  Are Lacan, Foucault and Derrida the pre-eminent influences on modern French academic literary theory? If so, why does she characterise them as minor?
  • grey-area 7y ago
    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.
    • DataWorker 7y ago
      They have relevance amongst themselves alone, and their value can be established empirically as more negative than positive. They add confusion and noise, and their utility is that of a Che Guevara T-shirt.
    • simonh 7y ago
      On reading up on this, it seems Derrida particularly is quite influential in Continental Philosophy, but in contrast his influence in the Anglophone world is mainly in literary studies. So us Anglophones see, understand and in some cases apply his work in very different ways than is prevalent in France.
• thinkingemote 7y ago
  I think having free education (e.g. in some EU) makes students appreciate their education. Education is a privilege and something to be earned for many. The universities have more power over the student life as they know best. Having students pay for everything (e.g in US) makes their education into a product and they are the consumer. Students can then demand to have certain conditions met. The consumer knows best, is king.
  • philipps 7y ago
    I had not seen this interpretation of the perceived value of education before and find it intriguing (and tentatively agree). I am surprised there aren’t more dissenting comments because it flies in the face of the free-market libertarian interpretation of value, which would argue that people do not value things that are free.
    • upvotinglurker 7y ago
      A clearer way of stating it might be not "the euro students value their education more because it's free," but "the euro students value their education more because college attendance is determined by academic status rather than ability to pay. So, they had to work hard at their studies to get into college, and must continue to perform well academically or risk being kicked out." Whereas in the US, college attendance generally* is determined by ability to pay, and a student who can pay will almost certainly be able to find some college that will let them attend, whether they take their studies seriously ("value their education") or not. *Of course achievement still matters if you want to get into the most selective institutions ... but I gather you can do that with (a lot) of money, too.
• Animats 7y ago
  No, but see 1968.