Provocations: Collected Essays on Art, Feminism, Politics, Sex, and Education

I wish all from the left were as honest, literate and wise as Camille Paglia. Hard to argue with many of her conclusions. I would say that Camille is a classical liberal with a somewhat libertarian point of view (redundant, I know.) Listen to her. Camille's an expert on culture and the arts with a solid grasp of history that really gives a context to our struggles. Plus, she's fun and you'll learn something.

This is a great collection of essays that is utterly refreshing in this depressing age of groupthink, victimage and identity politics (and I say this as a hard-core liberal). It is career spanning and, unlike the banal commentary coming out of progressive media outlets, makes me think, question, evolve. Highly recommended.

People will be reading Camille 100 years from now wondering why she was not given more mainstream attention. She has an open and brilliant mind. She understands that history, art and biology are intertwined. Jordan Peterson is low IQ Paglia.

Camille Paglia (born in 1947), university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA), is undoubtedly a talented prose stylist. At her best, her prose style is admirable. However, as a public intellectual, she tends to have rather contrarian views on certain subjects, as I will explain momentarily.Paglia has published a massive new collection of essays in the book Provocations: Collected Essays (Pantheon Books, 2018). In it, she says, “Provocations covers the two and a half decades since my last general collection, Vamps & Tramps, in 1994” (page xi). Her new collection includes fifty-six relatively short essays plus the lengthy compilation of material in the appendix titled “A Media Chronicle [from 1976 to 2018]” (pages 581-681). The “Media Chronicle” establishes her public track record in garnering attention as a public intellectual in the public arena of the court of public opinion.The fifty-six essays in Paglia’s new book are grouped together under the following eight headings:(1) Popular Culture (thirteen selections, pages 3-90);(2) Film (five selections, pages 93-142);(3) Sex, Gender, Women (ten selections, pages 145-202);(4) Literature (twelve selections, pages 205-324);(5) Art (seven selections, pages 327-366);(6) Education (fifteen selections, pages 369-461);(7) Politics (six selections, pages 465-491);(8) Religion (six selections, pages 495-575).Now, in my estimate, Paglia’s views about those eight topics/themes cannot be categorized as consistently “blue” or consistently “red.” For example, she says that she is a Democrat and that she supported Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary (see pages 489, 669-670, and 675). So color her “blue” in her political leanings. But some of her other views are decidedly libertarian (“red”) -- most notably her views in her polemics with so-called sex-negative feminists. (More on the feminist debate between sex-negative and sex-positive feminists below.)Frankly, in this massive collection, Paglia stakes out so many positions of so many topics/themes that I cannot that very many readers will agree with all them. But they might agree that all of her positions are provocations.In any event, I now want to contextualize and comment Paglia’s thought. First, I will discuss her 1990 book. Then I will further discuss her 2018 book.Disclosure: For many years, Paglia and I both served on the editorial advisory board of the refereed journal Explorations in Media Ecology, published by the Media Ecology Association. The two most widely known authors associated with media ecology are the Canadian Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) in English at St. Mike’s at the University of Toronto in Canada, author of the book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and of the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964), and his American popularizer and commentator on popular culture Neil Postman (1931-2003), who started the graduate program in media ecology at New York University (NYU), author of the book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 2nd ed. (Penguin Books, 2006; orig. ed., 1985). (More about McLuhan below.)PAGLIA’S 1990 BOOKNow, Paglia established her intellectual credentials with the book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press, 1990), the revised and expanded version of her doctoral dissertation in English at Yale University under the direction of the prolific Harold Bloom.But we should note that Paglia in Sexual Personae does not mention or engage or challenge the French feminist existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s thought in her influential book The Second Sex, translated and edited by H. M. Parshley (Knopf, 1953; orig. French ed., 1949), a book that influenced the women’s liberation movement (known as second-wave feminism) in the United States – well before post-modernist and post-structuralist thought became fashionable at Yale and other elite universities in the United States.In addition, Paglia in Sexual Personae (1990) does not mention the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) or engage or challenge his thought in The History of Sexuality, translated by Robert Hurley (Pantheon Books, 1978; orig. French ed. 1976). After a certain juncture, Foucault became well-known in literary circles at Yale and other elite universities in the United States. A prolific author, he had published volume one of his multi-volume work The History of Sexuality in French in 1976 (English translation, 1978); volume two in French in 1984 (English translation, 1985); volume three in French in 1984 (English translation, 1986).Volume four was published in French in 2018, but it has not yet appeared in English translation. However, Jose Dueno has reviewed volume four in the Jesuit-sponsored magazine America dated October 10, 2018.Now, Chloe Taylor, a feminist Foucault scholar in women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta in Canada, carefully and accessibly discusses Foucault’s thought in her 2017 book The Routledge Guidebook to Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (Routledge). She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, and she was a post-doctoral fellow in philosophy at McGill University (2006-2008). She published her doctoral dissertation as the book The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the “Confession Animal” (Routledge, 2009).In her 2017 guidebook about Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Taylor says, “While Foucault’s works prior to these final volumes [two and three] have often frustrated readers with their lack of citations and references, volume two and three of The History of Sexuality rely heavily on discussions of both primary and secondary sources, and these are scrupulously referenced. Unlike volume one, volumes two and three of The History of Sexuality include bibliographies” (page 210).However, Taylor also says, “Despite all the precautions Foucault took, historians and classicists have not been kind to Foucault’s final volumes [two and three], and have chastised the philosopher for writing on a topic about which they judge he knew too little” (page 211). Taylor references Simon Goldhill’s book Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Martha C. Nussbaum’s clever book The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton University Press, 1994, pages 5-6).For a cogent argument against Foucault’s and Taylor’s general preference to avoid so-called essentialism, see Nussbaum’s excellent article “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism” in the journal Political Theory, volume 20, number 2 (May 1992): pages 202-246.However, apart from Foucault’s and Taylor’s general preference to avoid so-called essentialism, Taylor points out that Foucault needed to address certain key questions in the volumes of The History of Sexuality that were to follow volume one: “[H]ow, beyond agentless ‘resistance effects’ [i.e., not the result of self-aware choices made by the subject], can we resist biopower and the medicalization of sex? How might we create subjectivity otherwise?” (page 208). In my estimate, she has identified important questions that Foucault needed to address to the best of his ability.Now, Taylor discusses (pages 146-172) so-called sex-negative feminists and so-called sex-positive feminists – but she does not mention Paglia as a sex-positive feminist, which is how Paglia sees herself. Paglia has distinguished herself as a fierce critic of sex-negative feminists – and as an outspoken critic of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought.In general, I tend not to like the libertarian orientation, and I especially dislike the economic libertarian orientation. But in the feminist debate between sex-positive feminists (Taylor refers to their position as the libertarian position) and sex-negative feminists (Taylor refers to their position as the radical position), I tend to side with the sex-positive position over against the sex-negative position, but not because I am a libertarian.Now, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), mentioned above, was part of the (mostly) twentieth-century movements in philosophy in Continental Europe known as phenomenology and existentialism. Similarly, Foucault was also part of the later movements in philosophy in Continental Europe known as post-modernism and post-structuralism, but in his case with an enormous emphasis on historical-minded studies.And what about Paglia – was/is she part of any movement of thought? She draws significantly on the work of the German-born Israeli Jungian psychoanalyst and psychological theorist Erich Neumann (1905-1960). However, in my estimate, Jungian psychological theory has not made significant inroads in the United States among high-brow Americans – compared with the inroads of certain movements in philosophy in Continental Europe have made among high-brow Americans. Consequently, Paglia’s use of Neumann’s Jungian thought is not likely to find a ready-made audience among most high-brow Americans.Now, my favorite scholar is the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri (USA). Ong refers to the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), and to Jungian thought in his (Ong’s) various books and essays.In addition, Ong refers to one of Neumann’s two major books that Paglia refers to in her book Sexual Personae (1990) – in his (Ong’s) book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University, 1971, pages 10-12 and 18) and in his book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981, pages 18-19, 25, 92, 100, 111, 115, and 148), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.Now, in my estimate, Foucault’s project in The History of Sexuality, and in certain other historical-minded studies he published, can be described as studying the features of what I would refer to as collective “shadow” aspects of our Western cultural history – analogous to what Jung refers to as each individual person’s personal “shadow.” It is usually not an entirely pleasant process to become aware of one’s own personal “shadow” material.Similarly, it is not be an entirely pleasant process to become aware of collective “shadow” aspects of our Western cultural history. Nevertheless, I hasten to say that I think that we need to exercise critical judgment about various claims advanced concerning alleged “shadow” aspects of our Western cultural history.PAGLIA’S 2018 BOOKNow, Paglia opens her new book Provocations with a clear-eyed introduction (pages ix-xvii). First, she says, “This book is not for everyone” (page ix). Then she enumerates five specific characteristics of people that her book is not for. Because I did not see any of those five characteristics as applying to me, I continued reading. Next, she enumerates five specific characteristics of people that her book is for. But I am not particularly impressed with those five characteristics.Now, Paglia refers to Jung on pages 37, 249, 250, 421, 432-443, 454, 511, 538, and 569, and she refers to Neumann on pages 246, 430-443, and 678-679. Paglia pays homage to Neumann in her essay “Erich Neumann: Theorist of the Great Mother [Archetype]” (pages 430-443). For further discussion of Neumann’s work, see Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont’s book Return of the Goddess (Crossroad, 1982).In Paglia’s essay “On Ayn Rand” (pages 180-181), Paglia says, “When I was a college student (1964-1968), I barely heard of her [Ayn Rand] and didn’t read her, and neither did my friends. Our influences were Marshall McLuhan, Norman O. Brown, Leslie Fiedler, Allen Ginsberg, and Andy Warhol” (page 180). However, I seriously doubt that Paglia means that she and her friends read McLuhan’s 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, mentioned above. I suspect that Paglia and her friends read only McLuhan’s 1964 book Understanding Media, mentioned above.In her new book, Paglia refers to McLuhan on pages xv, xvi, 180, 313-315, 318, 347, 417-429, 431, 522, 532, 584, and 592. Paglia pays homage to her view of McLuhan in her essay “The North American Intellectual Tradition” (pages 417-429), which she presented as the second annual Marshall McLuhan Lecture at Fordham University, the Jesuit university in New York City. Paglia’s essay was published in the journal Explorations in Media Ecology, volume 1, number 1 (2002). But Paglia does not seem to be aware of McLuhan’s keen interest in the Catholic tradition of philosophical and theological thought (which I will discuss further momentarily) -- which is not yet recognized by the high-brow gatekeepers in American culture as part of the North American intellectual tradition.In the academic year 1967-1968, McLuhan was a visiting professor at Fordham University. At a later time, a number of graduates of NYU’s media ecology program became professors in communication and media studies at Fordham. Incidentally, in the academic year 1966-1967, my scholar-hero Ong was the Berg visiting professor in English at New York University. But this evidently had no connection with the later emergence of the media ecology program at NYU – under Neil Postman.Now, in the late 1950s, McLuhan read not only Ong’s massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958), but also the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan’s philosophical masterpiece Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 5th ed. (University of Toronto Press, 1992; orig. ed., 1957). But I seriously doubt if Paglia ever read either of those important books.For a Lonerganian defense of essentialism to connect with Nussbaum’s defense of Aristotelian essentialism, mentioned above, see the Canadian Jesuit theologian and Lonergan scholar Frederick E. Crowe’s 1965 essay “Neither Jew nor Greek, but One Human Nature and Operation in All” that is reprinted, slightly revised, in the book Communication and Lonergan: Common Ground for Forging the New Age (Sheed & Ward, 1993, pages 89-107).Now, despite Paglia’s fascination with certain things McLuhan says, as noted above, she seems to be unaware of his deep interest in the Catholic tradition of philosophical and theological thought. Indeed, McLuhan, a devout convert to Catholicism, considered himself to be a Thomist. Consequently, we should not forget that McLuhan is not Paglia, and vice versa.But my scholar-hero Ong did not identify himself as a Thomist, even though he had studied Thomistic philosophy and theology as part of his Jesuit training. Instead, Ong described his own thought as phenomenological and personalist in cast.Now, in her new book, Paglia commences her critique of Michel Foucault on page xv, and she further critiques him on pages 43, 102, 159, 379, 384, 418, 421, 425, 430, 442, 450, 456, 508, 524, 570, 605, and 625.It appears from the index that the only other recent individual persons Paglia mentions more frequently are Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton – she mentions each of them more frequently than she mentions Foucault. (But in terms of historical persons, Paglia mentions Shakespeare more than anybody else.)Apart from specific references to Foucault, Paglia refers to post-structuralism on pages x, xv, 111, 159, 198, 224-225, 227, 232, 248, 304-305, 313-315, 339, 349, 379, 380, 384, 388, 409-410, 413-414, 418, 422, 424, 430-431, 436, 449, 454, 497, 511, 547, 550, 570-571, 598, and 608.In addition, Paglia refers to post-modernism on pages 46, 259, 305, 339, 380, 510, and 550.Now, my scholar-hero Ong sees his own work as being in the arena of discourse with post-modernism and post-structuralism, albeit in a distinctively different way from those competing discourses. See, for example, his book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977, pages 9-11) and his most widely translated book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982, pages 164-170).In Ong’s book Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press, 1986), the published version of Ong’s 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto, Ong discusses (pages 23, 54, 65, 71, 77-79, and 142) Roland Barthes’ 1971 book in French titled Sade, Fourier, Loyola, and Ong also discusses (pages 22 and 130) Jacques Derrida’s book Of Grammatology, translated from the French by Gayatri Chakravorty (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976; orig. French ed., 1967). In addition, Ong discusses (pages 4, 6, and 77) influence of the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, but without referring to any specific book by him.Finally, in Ong’s posthumously published incomplete book Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization, edited and with commentaries by Thomas D. Zlatic and Sara van den Berg (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ong discusses (page 97) Foucault in the context of explaining that Joshua Meyrowitz follows Michel Foucault’s thought about how new social environments are created in his (Meyrowitz’s) book No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (Oxford University Press, 1985, pages 311-312).For a bibliography of Ong’s 400 or so publications, including information about reprinted materials and translation, see Thomas M. Walsh’s “Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006” in the book Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (Hampton Press, 2011, page 185-245).Now, I imagine that Paglia, like Ong, sees her own work from her 1990 book Sexual Personae onward as competing with the more dominant discourses approved by the high-brow gatekeepers in American culture. However, it doesn’t appear to me that she has made much headway with the high-brow gatekeepers overall, even though some of them may acknowledge that her 1990 book is a tour de force.But Paglia’s fierce critiques of sex-negative feminists have not made her popular with the high-brow gatekeepers, many of whom tend to hold the sex-negative feminist position.In addition, Paglia’s fierce critiques of what I will style trickle-down versions of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought further alienate her from the high-brow gatekeepers, many of whom long ago jumped on the bandwagon for trickle-down versions of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought in academia.But is there an antidote to the trickle-down versions of post-modernist and post-structuralist thought in academia? Perhaps not. Consequently, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I will give Paglia credit for her fighting spirit as a public intellectual in the public arena of the court of public opinion.

CP's new essay collection, PROVOCATIONS, is a welcome addition to my CP shelf. First, some facts: there are 74 pieces, ranging in length from a single page or so to 50 pages or so. The broad subject categories: Popular Culture, Film; Sex, Gender, Women; Literature, Art, Education, Politics and Religion. Some come from the late 90's, some from as recently as 2017. The central text is about 590 pages, with several (but not many) illustrations and a "media chronicle" that runs to about 100 pages. The latter includes details and some commentary. The book's contents include reviews, formal lectures, essays, interviews, debate resolutions, and so on. In short, it contains significant scholarship and what the eighteenth century would have called 'miscellaneous and fugitive pieces'.While the book is a certifiable doorstop it reads very quickly. There is some repetition in the announcement of her positions and the delineation of her personal experience but it is useful to be reminded of the fact that her 'position' is both non-traditional (in fact, very 'traditional' for these lost times) and yet commonsensical and, ultimately, very broad-based. This is a trans/bi atheist who has voted for the green party who finds common ground with academic traditionalists, conservatives (academic traditionalism is deeply conservative without being right-wing), the pious (she is studiously reverent with regard to religion and would see comparative religions at the heart of the humanities curriculum), et al. She is a vocal feminist who criticizes women's studies, a student of sex and popular culture who criticizes the current English curriculum (if one can actually identify a 'curriculum' there) and a student of politics who votes for Jill Stein but listens to Sean Hannity.Her work is empirical, historical, studiously non-ideological and massively erudite though it is presented with a clear voice (she quite properly loathes the jargon, and program, of poststructuralism and postmodernism) and a broad spectrum of cultural reference. Several of the pieces here are very, very impressive in their displays of learning and observation, particularly those on Homer on film, the portrayals of middle eastern women in Western culture, the essay on western love poetry and the long essay on religious visions in the 1960's, a kind of William James meets Tom Wolfe piece.While she is a central voice in our cultural experience she is also a voice crying in the wilderness. She longs for the days of German polymaths exhibiting philological chops that now seem like voices from another galaxy, but she knows only too well that we have given up philology—the scientific arm of literary study—and, with it, the respect of the general public. Her position (like mine) would be caricatured as the 'you have to know everything to know anything' school. She argues for the study of comparative religions as the central, trans-departmental, unifying element in the humanities. I would argue for the history of philosophy and the history of science in this role, but both of us do so in a world where students do not yet perceive the difference between your and you're and are unable to locate the Mediterranean on a map.Her voice is necessary, irreplaceable and always a source of learning and delight.Highly recommended.

Paglia is always smart and provocative. Her views have become less radical and more sensible over time. This is because the culture has caught up with much of her thinking! This does not make her less of a leading voice on important social issues but, rather, is 'vindication" for her prescience. The essays here are insightful, well reasoned, sometimes amusing but always clear and meaningful. Highly recommended.

I have loved Camille Paglia since I first read SEXUAL PERSONAE some twenty-five years ago. Her insights are brilliant, thought-provoking and leave you nodding your head in agreement. She is a national treasure, and should be recognized as such.

This corpus of essays, bringing together twenty-five years of writing, show Paglia working at the very height of her powers. Paglia has a way with the written word, a profound understanding of the plosive potential and syntax of the English language, and never has it been crisper than in this essay collection. Like any comprehensive volume of writing there is something here for everyone, from iconoclasm to conservatism, atheism to Hindu spiritualism, reading Paglia is a joy for anyone with a passion for learning and true erudition.

Die Autorin ist wortgewaltig, provokant, sehr gebildet, denkt immer anders als der mainstream und verschont die Linksliberalen Eliten in den USA, den Poststrukturalismus und vieles andere mehr, auch die Genderstudiesr nicht mit scharfer Kritik. Diese Art des Contrarian Thinking ist ausgesprochen erfrischend, intellektuell überzeugend und literarisch ansprechend.

MI aspettavo un saggio interessante sul genere, sulla sessualità a carattere antropologico, culturale, storico e sociale e invece mi arriva un mattone con mille capitoli assolutamente non interessanti che parlano di RIHANNA, Bowie e mille altre cose, la copertina poi è orrida

...die wirklich jedes Genre von Politik über "die Gesellschaft" bis hin zu Kunst und Kultur abdeckt. Ein seitenstarkes Werk, das volle Aufmerksamkeit fordert, einen aber wirklich stimuliert und geradezu zu Gedankenflügen zwingt. Paglia dürfte eine der wenigen verbliebenen Intellektuellen der westlichen Welt sein.

El contenido muy bueno. Sin embargo, si compran desde México, háganlo en formato libro-electrónico. Es la segunda vez que compro el libro físico y la primera vez me ha llegado sucio y con errores de imprenta. Esta vez llegó sin un correcto embalaje y roto/abollado enla parte superior del lomo. Al parecer, legista y ventas son incompetentes.