Profile: Camille Paglia

f she was a noise, she’d be dead. The last time it was Committee on Human Sexu I an electric sander in the authentic was in the 50s, ality of the Presbyterian apartment next door, relent when there really was an Church (USA). The report, less, high-pitched and impos adversarial voice coming out titled Keeping Body and Soul sible to ignore. As it is, she of people I really respected, Together, caused a stir on its compares herself favourably the New York Jewish intel release by recommending to both Simone de Beauvoir lectuals like Lionel Trilling radical change in traditional and Madonna. For the past and the people of Partisan Christian attitudes towards two years, Camille Paglia, Review." sexual behaviour, specifically Professor of Humanities at the A child of the 60s revolu endorsing extramarital rela PROFILE University of the Arts in tion herself, Paglia argues that tionships and homosexuality. Philadelphia and controver her generation squandered its Its contents are a perfect ve sial author, has been making intellectual inheritance with hicle for Paglia to demon CAMILLE a living irritating the hell out excesses and built, in the strate the WASPish moral- of practically any ideology place of a true revolutionary ism which lurks at the heart PAGLIA which wanders into her sights. consciousness, a hollow of much contemporary leftish Here she is on feminism: shrine to political correctness. liberalism. Her targets are liberal schol The well-intentioned re She's the out of Contemporary feminists, ars and their courses— the port in question proceeds from control ego at the who are generally poor or narrowly trained scholars, gamut of post- 60s humanities a premise of “the basic good back of the insist on viewing history fodder, from standard Marx- ness of sexuality”. (It is a vi classroom; the as a weepy scenario of ist-feminist critiques through sion which, Paglia notes, to poststructuralist models. “would have made Doris Day budding student male oppression and fe male victimisation. But it Superficially, there’s little to and Debbie Reynolds— those politician who's is more accurate to see distinguish her rapid-fire at 50s blonde divas— proud”.) tacks on the new liberal or Departing from this optimis always bending men, driven by sexual anxiety away from their thodoxy from those of dis tic view of sexuality, the re your ear in the mothers, forming group gruntled academic tradition port proceeds to apply a femi- university bar; the alliances by male bond alists. Whatdifferentiates her, nist-Marxist critique to con ing to create the complex however, is not rhetoric but temporary sexual politics, tar loudmouth video structures of society, art, speaking position. geting “our cultural captivity clip director sitting science and technology. Paglia talks as an insider, to a patriarchal model of sexu afeminist/lesbian scholar who ality and its ethic of sexual And here she is again on next to you on an is no relation to the WASP- control”. Christian values, it conservative family values: international flight; dominated culture of Ivy argues, demand that Gay men are the guard League conservatism in the marginalised groups are the friend who ians of the masculine im US academies. Hercriticisms, treated with tolerance. The critiques the movie pulse. Tohave anonymous accordingly, have that spe ultim ate vision is of a sex in a dark alleyway is to while you're cial brand of venom which “nonpatriarchal future” where pay homage to the dream defectors reserve for their everyone can get along free watching it. of male freedom... Simi former compatriots. In her of discrimination. larly, straight men who two recent bestsellers Sexual In this revised Christian visit prostitutes are val Personae: Art and Decadence brotherhood, newly purged of iantly striving to keep sex from Nefertiti to Emily racist, sexist and homophobic free from emotion, duty, Dickinson and Sex, Art and overtones, Paglia discerns family— in other words, American Culture she lets fly something smelly, however: from society, religion and with two decades of pent-up “the revival of the old Protes procreative Mother Na aggression. The results are tant ethic, masquerading in ture. variable. A t their worst her new, hip clothes”. The re A self-proclaimed bi theoriesare simplisticandher port, she says, gives us sexual feminist, Paglia has lit criticisms petulant; but at her vanilla sex, smothered tle sympathy for either the best, Paglia manages to land with artificial butter Left or the Right. Indeed, she some long-awaited blows for scotch syrup. In its liberal argues that the liberal-con common sense. zeal to understand, to ac servative binary no longer In Sex, Art and American cept, to heal, it reduces holds. Speaking at the Mas Culture, Paglia kills two sit the grand tragicomedy of sachusetts Institute of Tech ting ducks with one essay. love and lust to a Hall nology in 1991 she told her ‘The Joy of Presbyterian Sex’ mark card. Its unctuous audience: “The liberal and takes apart an earnest docu normalising of dissident conservative dichotomy is ment released by the Special sex is imperialistic and 4 ALR MARCH 1993 surface of culture always threatening to spill over. The nature-culture split is a well- worn dichotomy, but it ex plains why she has little sym pathy with liberal attacks on Western reason and culture. In their zeal to critique the rigidity and hierarchical logic of patriarchy, Paglia argues that liberals have fallen into the trap of romanticising na ture and forgetting the pagan chaos of the swamp from which we emerged. It’s an old thesis based on an essentialist view of his tory, nature and culture. And, ironically, it’sone which leads Pagl ia down the same path of crude biologically-based dis tinctions which the feminists she criticises have followed. Despite her own calls for greater scholarly rigour and her claims that modem hu manities academics are poorly or narrowly trained, Paglia’s own intellectual inquiries ul timately lack depth or con sistency. Her engine is reac tive rather than inventive. Despite this major weak ness, however, Paglia does have something to offer cur oppressive. The gay world the women’s movement for The title of her major work, rent debates. Her brutal hon is stripped of its outlaw the past decade. As Austral- Sexual Personae, was inspired esty is a welcome relief from adventures in toilets, al ianfeminist scholar, Elizabeth by Ingmar Bergman’s film the pussy-footing self-justifi- leyways, trucks and orgy Grosz noted recently in an Persona, meaning literally clay cation which often passes for rooms.. .This iscensorship interview with the Sydney or wooden masks worn by analysis in cultural studies and in the name of liberal be Morning Herald, many femi actors in Greek or Roman theory forums these days. In nevolence. nists disagree strongly with theatre. Western personality, an era where oppositions Paglia discerns the same the essentialist critique of Paglia argues, originates in seem to be dissolving, where trimmed-lawn view of sex and patriarchy popularised by au the idea of mask, and society it’s getting harder to tell your emotion in much feminist thors such as Naomi Woolf. is “the place of masks, a ritual left from right, Paglia’s brand ideology. Central to this re Says Grosz: “Woolf is part of theatre”. Underlying this of hysterical opposition is a pression, she argues, is a re a return to telling women theatre, Paglia discerns an strangely appropriate anti luctance to engage aesthetics what they should or shouldn’t age-old drama, the conflict of dote. As a theorist she has a or psychoanalysis. The result be doing. She sets up an ap- reason and nature. lot in common with the 60s is a feminist politics which pearance-reality split which I In an abandoned preface rock ‘n ’ roll she loves so has failed to come to terms find deeply disturbing because to Sexual Personae, she wrote: much— it’s a raw, angry en with beauty or pleasure and it presumes that we have lay “Civilisation is an ethical ergy which refuses to be fed can only fall back on a mono ers of appearance we can peel stronghold, the Appollonian pacifying words. And, in this lithic view of lust as some off and get to the ‘real’ woman palace that reason has built ... sense, she may be just the thing men ‘do’ to women. or person underneath.” Sadean nature, the dark hero irritant contemporary liberal Strip back the hysterical Grosz’s comment fingers of Sexual Personae, is the debate needs. ■ cant, and Paglia is on to some something dear to Paglia’s Dionysian ... raw, brute, thing. Indeed, she’s managed heart: the centrality of the earthpower”. In Paglia’s the CATHARINE LUMBY is to popularise a debate which mask to Western philosophy sis, the gross continuum of a Sydney freelance journal has been raging internally in and, in particular, aesthetics. nature lurks just below the ist. MARCH 1993 ALR 5.

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