I am re-reading Sex, Art, and American Culture by Paglia after my brother salvaged a copy from the dustbin. It must have been 4 years since I first read it and I understand a lot more. The vehement attack on “French theory” now surprises me in the sense that she mainly focuses on Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard without mentioning what are imo the truly great French theorists: Barthes, Deleuze, Bataille. I know from a Salon q&a[1] that she doesn’t even like Bataille. Really! Re-read him Camille! In that short 1997 q&a she notes that she “was deeply disappointed in Bataille from the moment I picked up his books. His themes are my themes, his influences (in many cases) my influences.” She does confess to like Sade, Gautier, Balzac, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Sartre (whom I find difficult to stomach), de Beauvoir, Genet and Bachelard.
Of course her style is offensive (and I suspect it has had some re-writing in subsequent editions). As a European I find the following derogatory remarks on the French post-wwii-climate difficult to swallow (but funny anyhoo):
- “Of course the French felt decentered: they had just been crushed by Germany. American G.I.’s (including my uncles) got shot up rescuing France when she was lying flat on her face under the Nazi boot. Hence it is revolting to see pampered American academics down on their knees kissing French bums.”
Nevertheless, Paglia strikes me time and time again as a great intellectual with an amount of books read which seems astronomical and a very astute power of analysis: how she equates Foucault’s taxonomy to Primitive Classification by Mauss and Durkheim and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to Durkheim‘s The Division of Labour in Society.
This reading also brought Arnold Hauser‘s The Social History of Art to my attention.
Sex, Art, and American Culture is a sensible buy for someone who wants to brush up on cultural history from an irreverent but yet well-read perseptive.
On a different note, and only for a Dutch-reading public: the publication of Hermans-Reve correspondence is imminent. Hermans was brilliant and Reve a bit of a bore, at one point Hermans decided not to continue the correspondence. Read more at The Paper Man.
Paglia may read a lot, but my experience of her writing is that she is basically a snot. She has about as much intellectual weight as W. F. Buckley did, which is to say, none. I am astonished that she is taken seriously as a critic by anyone, regardless of the fact that I may share a few – very few – of her opinions.
France reveres writers and artists whereas the U.S. is embroiled in the cult of personality/celebrity. I’m not a fan of Paglia’s, I think she’s a master promoter, making inflammatory statements and ridiculous assertions in order to draw attention to some new work or get her more lucrative speaking assignments. This is but one more example…
I’ve defended Paglia before and I will continue to do so. She was instrumental in introducing me to “cultural studies” with attention to the sensibilities I like.
Who else did that in the 1990s? Was there anyone? Someone who loved popular culture and who respected black music? Who went for the queer thing and did not shun decadence?
J
The art is always subjective and as such generate controversy
Well, look…if she got you interested in neat stuff, I can understand your fondness for her, but I TOTALLY agree with C.Burns and his assessment of her. She is, as I call ’em, a sway-do intellectual.
Whether “cultural studies” as it is constituted, is something to which one should be introduced is not a question on which we agree, I imagine.
Someone who loved popular culture and who respected black music?..
Man, jazz is practically an industry here, and has been for some time. Black influences in American pop culture have been recognized and celebrated for years by anyone who is not blinded by our particular variety of racism, as long as the critic is interested in pop culture in the first place. I don’t see how she added anything to the discussion except an in-your-face attitude calculated to gain her attention. I imagine the impact may be different in Europe where Afro-American culture has always had the attraction of the exotic.
As for not shunning decadence…I’d say she wallowed uncritically in it, unlike the glorious Mario Praz.
I might as well make it unanimous. I regard Paglia as an inconsequential critic and thinker, but a masterly provocateuse.
Lichanos, Cliff and Tim,
I’ve re-read the suppressed preface for Sexual Personae yesterday night, and I have to disagree with you.
I agree she is a provocateuse, but, I like it.
I’ve read the natural pecking order, embodied philosophy, and it’s so much influenced my own thought (as obvious in items such as faultlines in 20th century art, that we just have to agree to disagree.
I known that she is very little respected these days and it is kind of bon ton to deride her, but I will continue to defend her.
Just as I will continue to defend Stephen King for introducing me all the horror tropes, maybe it’s just a generational thing.
Jan
Generational thing..? I thought we’d established that you and I were nearly the same age?
I don’t get your point of view…or rather, I think maybe I do. You say you disagree (with us) but that “you like it.” Nobody says you shouldn’t like what you like – I like eating Dairy Queen soft ice cream but I wouldn’t say it’s “good food” for me.
I certainly don’t deride Paglia or anyone else because it’s bon ton. I do it because radically disagree.
What are you “defending Stephen King” and Paglia for, or from? Nobody says you shouldn’t like them because you find it fun to read them, or because they introduced you to things…that’s not the point. Personally, I find King’s prose to be about as bad as it gets in English, and I find his movies tiresome (except for Stanley K’s take on him, of course.) To “defend” him because you “like” him, while sort of agreeing that he writes junk, but he introduced you to yada yada makes no sense to me. Nobody is saying he should be taken out and shot.
I think it comes down to a basic stance towards truth and value that is at the crux of why I find so much cultural criticism today exasperating. (I was just seething about this on my commute this morning…) It provides a rationale for a lot of smart people to derive institutional and cultural acceptance for spending lots of time on things that they don’t really feel are very valuable in themselves but that they find too entertaining to give up. Well…people are free to spend their time as they like, but soi-disant intellectuals, people concerned with ideas, should honestly assess their activity. If somebody said to me, “King writes terribly, but his morbid and obsessive plotlines afford me entertainment at times…” I would have absolutely nothing to say. How can one object unless one is a Puritan concerned with damnation and salvation? But to say, “Oh, King is soooo awful (i.e., Camp a la Sontag…) that he’s fascinating is just switching off one’s brain. Again, that’s fine and dandy, but why try to present it as something else?
Thus I end my rant, having fully discharged my bile and relieved myself. Thank you for this opportunity, Jahsonic…
Lichanos,
As always, I enjoy your rants. The first thing that came to my mind was that I had already had this conversation 2 years ago.
The generational thing: I’m from ’65.
I’m defending them from oblivion. I am also defending them as a conduct to put my readers in touch with a body of thought I feel is important. I don’ t feel they are writing junk, neither King nor Paglia.
About … truth and value …. What are the values you defend, and can’t find in Paglia? What is it exactly that you radically disagree with in Paglia’s thought? That’s what I would like to know.
Jan
Interesting exchange two years ago, but not quite the same discussion I think.
Why defend them from oblivion? King is popular as all hell – who reads Flaubert these days? College students? Academics ALL end in oblivion – Paglia’s fate will be no worse, not special.
The weight and acceleration of society today is ALL FOR lowbrow – why do so many highbrows feel they must defend it, as if it is in danger of being strangled in its crib?
Your definition of nobrow is fine – let those of us who love culture absorb and digest it ALL. Why exclude anything, it’s true! After all, how can you know what is of truely superb value if you haven’t sampled all the mediocre stuff around? I don’t see this as “slumming.” One must sample all the world to have a sense of values. Contempt is not acceptable either. Is “unsophisticated” art worth of snobbish contempt? NO! But rejecting something as junk is not necessarily that (although, I admit, it OFTEN is.)
I totally agree that work should not be excluded from the “canon” on the basis of content, but I fail to see the relevance of Sontag’s comment. Perhaps academics and critics are confused and duplicitous on this point – who cares about them? I’m talking about ideas here, not cultural sub-communities. So, in the end, I’d say one cannot easily separate style and content (form and content). Is that a surprise?
I’ve gone on too long. As to your last question about what I radically disagree with in Paglia…I’d have to go back and read her again and cite specifics. The value that I defend is the value of distinctions and honesty. We all have hierarchies of values – let’s admit it and debate them openly, rather than claiming that because they are all idiosyncratic they are all without value and totally arbitrary.
I’ve gone on too long
We’ve gone on too long.
The word you’ve learned me however is slumming, and it’s an important concept in the nobrow paradigm.
And for the rest, and my “bad tastes”, they are not sought after. My mother used to chide (gently) me when I expressed my early admiration for such objects as the 1974 Corvette, to which she added: “your tastes are cheap.”
Yours
Jan
THERE’S your problem! It’s your MOTHER’S fault. (Isn’t it always.)
’74 Vette no my favorite, but nothing “cheap” about it, I think.