my method she says in the introduction
is sensationalism 600 pages of
sensationalism is almost overpowering
and so is Camille Paglia, but perhaps the
most controversial thing about her is
she embraces the Western tradition in
art and literature and disagrees with
feminists who consider it
male irrelevance I consider myself a
feminist but what I'm trying to do is
reform current American feminism to
bring it back in line with common sense
and with the evidence of world history
and present world culture would I be
correct in saying that then you just
reject the whole notion of this argument
over the Canon, dead white male argument,
over the Canon and and say you can you
can go back and reevaluate it or
redefine it absolutely I think I think
that this argument the dead white male
argument is been produced by
incompetence
I think it's an embarrassment to women
and so as far as I'm concerned the best
work by women's scholars was produced
before World War two by Jane Harrison
who is my great you know Idol from the
late 19th century and early 20th century
at Cambridge and then those great women
who took the highest standards who were
the first faculty members at Smith at
Vassar at Bryn Mawr and so on these are
women who were often childless unmarried
you know kind of battle-ax maiden ladies
wearing a monocle that kind of thing and
right now if there's a huge scam abroad
right contemporary feminism has not
produced one major intellectual work
there has been nothing major
since Simone de Beauvoir, who was
deeply learned in the past. This has got
to stop . Women's studies is turned into
this incestuous mess of propaganda and
just just tenth-rate work and we cannot
go on like this we cannot allow men to
continue to scorn the work of women's
scholars because of these you know these
second-rate standards I want young women
to be reading works at the very highest
level inside to think that oh well women
are going to make their own standards
separate from that of the great
tradition it lets say in the you know in
in the history or the social sciences or
or or hard science this is gently absurd
someone must speak out against this you
begin your book
I must say I was I was struck with thee
with the non humility of it I think
that's great I've in the beginning was
nature you say that's right joke by the
way
I mean people speak of me being humorous
I don't know what they're talking about
is the funniest academic book ever
written there's a satire right there in
the beginning was nature it's parroting
the Bible and that's see what that was
one of my ambitions to write a book that
was so arrogant just so eager maniacal
so to make men feel what it's like to
hear male voices all the time right and
I want to just make this juggernaut it
would roll right over men so they would
feel you know the sort of grandeur of
female power that's why I feel that you
know that women should not be accepting
your second-rate standards except the
highest standards you know smash men
defeat men this is my aim the other the
other thing that strikes me from this
book is paganism yes paganism is busting
out all over in this book yes because
popular culture must triumph I say over
a high culture in the late 20th century
yes paganism though no you-you-you you
use a word that I don't even think I've
ever seen before, chthonian. Chthonian is, yes, it's
coming from Jane Harrison that you know
my who was the great Cambridge
anthropologist from the late 19th
century in early twenty century and she
I used this word to describe the spirits
of the underworld it was an element that
she found had not been noticed in the
study by 19th century scholars of Greek
mythology which had concentrated merely
on the Olympian gods you know the
beautiful gods of a on top of the
mountain so this idea, chthonian, means
literally of the earth you can also pronounce it chthonic, like that, and what I'm showing is
paganism is usually seen very simplistic
terms a sort of people romping in a
green meadow or something I'm showing
that it was a tremendous spiritual
system a comprehensive system that took
into account all of the dualities and
ambiguities of human existence of human
life as that's what that's what I'm
showing here the complexity of it and
its survival in art I'm saying
essentially Western art even when it has
ostensibly Christian subjects has
actually been inspired by paganism
the Bible in the temperament the 10
commandments forbid images of anything
in you know other god of human of
anything in animal nature so what I am
arguing is that the entire Western art
tradition is in essence pagan and that
therefore we have this instability built
into our culture the official moral
codes on top and then this turbulent
kind of pagan artistic impulse below
let's point out that in your book you
note that cinema that movies is the
ultimate 20th century expression of
paganism
yes exactly movies don't in popular
culture and the entire art tradition
painting and sculpture also I regard as
part of the pagan undercurrent in
Western culture and in Christianity
cannot Judea Christianity cannot
possibly explain or accept what's going
on in art see what I've shown is that
that the feminist Trenton
you know dichotomy opinion art and
pornography is indefensible I have to on
pornography everywhere I've shown it in
Michelangelo even in the great pietà
the nude Christ in the Virgin's lap or
in Hamlet is everywhere in Hamlet that's
what also another thing I've shown I
take a radically libertarian position
I'm Pro pornography / prostitution Pro
homosexuality Pro legalization of drugs
and so on so see it's very difficult for
feminism in current feminism to resist
this kind of arguments so used it's so
it's so rigidify din - it's sort of like
oh we're are the subversive voices and
then all those like fuddy-duddy
neoconservatives over there I am not
that I'm a voice from the 60s that I
stand for free thought and free speech
Camille Paglia
her book is called sexual persona art
and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily
Dickinson
you
