9 ms·

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

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.

cjfd 7y ago
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.
- grey-area 7y ago
  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.
- honzzz 7y ago
  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.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Seems like Paglia is stating the blindingly obvious, because so many in her field were rejecting it?
- pjc50 7y ago
  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)
rvn1045 7y ago
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.
- jboynyc 7y ago
  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.
  - YorkshireSeason 7y ago
    In what sense is Donna Haraway a "highly credentialed biologist"?
    - soudiere 7y ago
      Haraway has a PhD in Biology from Yale.
      - YorkshireSeason 7y ago
        According to Wikipedia [1] her PhD was about "use of metaphor in shaping experiments in experimental biology". This is not what I'd call biology proper. You can have a look at it: it was later published as a book "Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields" which is available online [2]. I'm not sure how [2] makes her a "highly credentialed biologist" (in the same sense that "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" doesn't make Kuhn a highly credentialed physicist). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway [2] https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabrics_and_Fields_Metaphors_That_Shape_Embryos.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabr...
        7y ago
pjc50 7y ago
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.
- Hitton 7y ago
  Many great minds are in some way flawed, the thing that makes them great thinkers able to come up with revolutionary ideas probably makes them more susceptible to crackpottery. Examples: Linus Pauling, Peter Duesberg, William Herschel, Isaac Newton, Fred Hoyle, Lynn Margulis
  - twic 7y ago
    Kary Mullis invented PCR, won a Nobel prize for it, then became an HIV/AIDS denier.
- wtdata 7y ago
  Wolfgang Pauli deeply believed in the occult and Isaac Newton in alchemy and biblical interpretations.
wtdata 7y ago
> What does this really mean? Does it mean anything? She means that human consciousness is born from our actions towards nature since before we were conscious and that we cannot detach morality from that. Furthermore, we can't hope to define sex and gender, before understanding the roots of morality since they are defined by our primeval nature, not by society rules born out of conscious thought.
- benc666 7y ago
  Morality is a human construct. Nature has no morality, only survival matters - by any means. That's why such cruelty (from human moral viewpoint) is found in Nature.
  - jazzyk 7y ago
    >Nature has no morality But perhaps it does? Animals kill other animals only to survive (to kill them in order to eat them or to defend themselves from being killed/eaten) Humans may be the only species who hurt other humans just for the fun of it - now _that_ is cruelty.
    - antisemiotic 7y ago
      Humans and cats, actually.
      - mbeex 7y ago
        And others too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_m_3ZQN8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_m_3ZQN8Q
coldtea 7y ago
>What does this really mean? Does it mean anything? Yes, a lot of things. And it's pretty trivial in its meaning really (also in its expression). In other words, it's not like some academic obscurantism. She clearly says something clear itself. At first I thought your disagreement stemmed from unfamiliarity with European philosophy, and wanting everything to be spelt out in the dry style of anglosaxon philosophy. But since you're OK with Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, I can't possibly fathom where your disagreement with the above is. If you can read Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, you can surely parse Paglia (at least the above except). As for the vitriol she expresses against them, well they too have expressed vitriol against each other, at some point or another. It's par for the course, as these philosophers don't pretend to express some kind of scientific understanding (which converges), but ways to look at the world (which can diverge). As for what she says, I'll try putting it more crudely below: 1) "In the beginning was nature". Civilization and humans start from being parts of nature (e.g. we start as regular animals). 2) "The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem". Our religion (and other ideas, philosophy, morals, etc) evolve from our initial animal status and in connection to nature (e.g. consider how early gods where embodiments of natural forces, but also how natural constraints, from death to drought, to emotions, to reproductive urges, etc where things we responded with religion, song, myth, etc. What's "natural" to us (and conversely, unnatural/obscene/etc) is our most common moral question. 3) "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". Sex and gender are tied to our natural (animal) origins (male/female organs, reproductive instinct, different physiology, etc). Sex is natural to us -- but it's still a complex issue (e.g. morally, legally, culturally). To feel comfortable and open towards sex, we should finally feel comfortable with our animal nature. Finally, she asserts that since sex is part of nature, it is the natural part in us (e.g. not our artifice or construction, but something we inherited from our animal nature, and which connects us to it). You could easily find similar excerpts in all three of Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida.
FabHK 7y ago
FWIW, I find Paglia's passage you quoted much more intelligible than Lacan or Derrida's notoriously impenetrable prose, and find it surprising and actually disingenuous that you'd accuse her of "bombast and pseudo-academic jargon" when that's a charge that can very much be laid at the feet of the postmodernists. I mean, there are literally books about it, such as Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostors (or Fashionable Nonsense in the US).
- grey-area 7y ago
  I haven't read Intellectual Impostors, but suspect it is more about people like Paglia who find elaborate ways of saying nothing (or is it everything?), than about Foucault or Derrida. Indeed the authors said this themselves as someone linked lower down: Des penseurs célèbres tels qu'Althusser, Barthes, Derrida et Foucault sont essentiellement absents de notre livre. [1] Barthes is another quite obtuse but really wonderful writer (IMO) - who crucially has something to say. Paglia I suspect of having nothing to say I'm afraid. Lacan I haven't read anything significant, but he does have a reputation for being obtuse and a bit of a fraud yes, so maybe the charge by her against him is accurate, though frankly Paglia should not be calling anyone else difficult or bombastic given her style. Note the person grouping these three very disparate thinkers is Paglia. I didn't cherry-pick that quote, it's just the first para of her book. I honestly am not sure what she means by that first page of Sexual Personae (for example she doesn't define nature), and one paragraph is not enough to do her awful writing justice because it bludgeons the reader with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing, as if to bully them into submission; she flits about from pithy assertion to clever sounding reference, giving other authors an adjective and not much more, then moving on to her next thought, without any sort of research or backup for her bald gnomic assertions. Indeed her confident nonsense about the authors quoted above sums up for me her depth very well. [1] https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmont-s-etonnent-du-tolle-suscite-en-france-par-impostures-intellectuelles-qui-s-attaque_217100 https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmo...
obviuosly 7y ago
Yeah, she's pretty dull, but she's a women hence you can cite her on obvious truth about sexual dimorphism without being called sexist which is convenient and also fully explains her rising popularity.
pacala 7y ago
Interesting is neither true, nor good.
clatan 7y ago
That quote you chose is as straightforward as it gets.
alfromspace 7y ago
That passage is perfect. The third-wave feminists, activist-journalists and academics claim to be fighting against socially constructed ideas, but what they really tend to be waging an all-out war against is nature - and to replace natural ways of being and thinking with THEIR socially constructed, immensely convoluted ideas that had no chance of being accepted without the backing of extremely powerful institutions like academia, the media, social media, big corporations, and harassment journalism - imposing tremendous costs to not adopting them.
camelNotation 7y ago
It seems fairly self-explanatory. Sex didn't evolve independently of the rest of humanity and evolution occurs at the level of the organism as well as at the level of the social group (religion, culture, hierarchies, etc). You can't break sex away from the rest of evolution and assume it has no impact on the rest of what and who we are or that what and who we are had no direct impact on the evolution of sex differences. It's not obscure or vague, it's obvious. Now it may not be USEFUL to make that observation, but it certainly contradicts the manner in which many activist social scientists construe notions of sex and gender with unfalsifiable claims.

cjfd 7y ago

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.

grey-area 7y ago
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.
honzzz 7y ago
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.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Seems like Paglia is stating the blindingly obvious, because so many in her field were rejecting it?
pjc50 7y ago
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)

rvn1045 7y ago

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.

jboynyc 7y ago
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.
- YorkshireSeason 7y ago
  In what sense is Donna Haraway a "highly credentialed biologist"?
  - soudiere 7y ago
    Haraway has a PhD in Biology from Yale.
    - YorkshireSeason 7y ago
      According to Wikipedia [1] her PhD was about "use of metaphor in shaping experiments in experimental biology". This is not what I'd call biology proper. You can have a look at it: it was later published as a book "Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields" which is available online [2]. I'm not sure how [2] makes her a "highly credentialed biologist" (in the same sense that "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" doesn't make Kuhn a highly credentialed physicist). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway [2] https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabrics_and_Fields_Metaphors_That_Shape_Embryos.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Haraway_Donna_Crystals_Fabr...
      - 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

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.

Hitton 7y ago
Many great minds are in some way flawed, the thing that makes them great thinkers able to come up with revolutionary ideas probably makes them more susceptible to crackpottery. Examples: Linus Pauling, Peter Duesberg, William Herschel, Isaac Newton, Fred Hoyle, Lynn Margulis
- twic 7y ago
  Kary Mullis invented PCR, won a Nobel prize for it, then became an HIV/AIDS denier.
wtdata 7y ago
Wolfgang Pauli deeply believed in the occult and Isaac Newton in alchemy and biblical interpretations.

wtdata 7y ago

> What does this really mean? Does it mean anything? She means that human consciousness is born from our actions towards nature since before we were conscious and that we cannot detach morality from that. Furthermore, we can't hope to define sex and gender, before understanding the roots of morality since they are defined by our primeval nature, not by society rules born out of conscious thought.

benc666 7y ago
Morality is a human construct. Nature has no morality, only survival matters - by any means. That's why such cruelty (from human moral viewpoint) is found in Nature.
- jazzyk 7y ago
  >Nature has no morality But perhaps it does? Animals kill other animals only to survive (to kill them in order to eat them or to defend themselves from being killed/eaten) Humans may be the only species who hurt other humans just for the fun of it - now _that_ is cruelty.
  - antisemiotic 7y ago
    Humans and cats, actually.
    - mbeex 7y ago
      And others too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_m_3ZQN8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_m_3ZQN8Q

coldtea 7y ago

>What does this really mean? Does it mean anything? Yes, a lot of things. And it's pretty trivial in its meaning really (also in its expression). In other words, it's not like some academic obscurantism. She clearly says something clear itself. At first I thought your disagreement stemmed from unfamiliarity with European philosophy, and wanting everything to be spelt out in the dry style of anglosaxon philosophy. But since you're OK with Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, I can't possibly fathom where your disagreement with the above is. If you can read Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, you can surely parse Paglia (at least the above except). As for the vitriol she expresses against them, well they too have expressed vitriol against each other, at some point or another. It's par for the course, as these philosophers don't pretend to express some kind of scientific understanding (which converges), but ways to look at the world (which can diverge). As for what she says, I'll try putting it more crudely below: 1) "In the beginning was nature". Civilization and humans start from being parts of nature (e.g. we start as regular animals). 2) "The background from which and against which our ideas of god were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem". Our religion (and other ideas, philosophy, morals, etc) evolve from our initial animal status and in connection to nature (e.g. consider how early gods where embodiments of natural forces, but also how natural constraints, from death to drought, to emotions, to reproductive urges, etc where things we responded with religion, song, myth, etc. What's "natural" to us (and conversely, unnatural/obscene/etc) is our most common moral question. 3) "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". Sex and gender are tied to our natural (animal) origins (male/female organs, reproductive instinct, different physiology, etc). Sex is natural to us -- but it's still a complex issue (e.g. morally, legally, culturally). To feel comfortable and open towards sex, we should finally feel comfortable with our animal nature. Finally, she asserts that since sex is part of nature, it is the natural part in us (e.g. not our artifice or construction, but something we inherited from our animal nature, and which connects us to it). You could easily find similar excerpts in all three of Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida.

FabHK 7y ago

FWIW, I find Paglia's passage you quoted much more intelligible than Lacan or Derrida's notoriously impenetrable prose, and find it surprising and actually disingenuous that you'd accuse her of "bombast and pseudo-academic jargon" when that's a charge that can very much be laid at the feet of the postmodernists. I mean, there are literally books about it, such as Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostors (or Fashionable Nonsense in the US).

grey-area 7y ago
I haven't read Intellectual Impostors, but suspect it is more about people like Paglia who find elaborate ways of saying nothing (or is it everything?), than about Foucault or Derrida. Indeed the authors said this themselves as someone linked lower down: Des penseurs célèbres tels qu'Althusser, Barthes, Derrida et Foucault sont essentiellement absents de notre livre. [1] Barthes is another quite obtuse but really wonderful writer (IMO) - who crucially has something to say. Paglia I suspect of having nothing to say I'm afraid. Lacan I haven't read anything significant, but he does have a reputation for being obtuse and a bit of a fraud yes, so maybe the charge by her against him is accurate, though frankly Paglia should not be calling anyone else difficult or bombastic given her style. Note the person grouping these three very disparate thinkers is Paglia. I didn't cherry-pick that quote, it's just the first para of her book. I honestly am not sure what she means by that first page of Sexual Personae (for example she doesn't define nature), and one paragraph is not enough to do her awful writing justice because it bludgeons the reader with paragraph after paragraph of the same thing, as if to bully them into submission; she flits about from pithy assertion to clever sounding reference, giving other authors an adjective and not much more, then moving on to her next thought, without any sort of research or backup for her bald gnomic assertions. Indeed her confident nonsense about the authors quoted above sums up for me her depth very well. [1] https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmont-s-etonnent-du-tolle-suscite-en-france-par-impostures-intellectuelles-qui-s-attaque_217100 https://next.liberation.fr/livres/1997/10/18/sokal-et-bricmo...

obviuosly 7y ago

Yeah, she's pretty dull, but she's a women hence you can cite her on obvious truth about sexual dimorphism without being called sexist which is convenient and also fully explains her rising popularity.

pacala 7y ago

Interesting is neither true, nor good.

clatan 7y ago

That quote you chose is as straightforward as it gets.

alfromspace 7y ago

That passage is perfect. The third-wave feminists, activist-journalists and academics claim to be fighting against socially constructed ideas, but what they really tend to be waging an all-out war against is nature - and to replace natural ways of being and thinking with THEIR socially constructed, immensely convoluted ideas that had no chance of being accepted without the backing of extremely powerful institutions like academia, the media, social media, big corporations, and harassment journalism - imposing tremendous costs to not adopting them.

camelNotation 7y ago

It seems fairly self-explanatory. Sex didn't evolve independently of the rest of humanity and evolution occurs at the level of the organism as well as at the level of the social group (religion, culture, hierarchies, etc). You can't break sex away from the rest of evolution and assume it has no impact on the rest of what and who we are or that what and who we are had no direct impact on the evolution of sex differences. It's not obscure or vague, it's obvious. Now it may not be USEFUL to make that observation, but it certainly contradicts the manner in which many activist social scientists construe notions of sex and gender with unfalsifiable claims.