From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Paglia
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 21:49:58 GMT

I have been following the Paglia discussion with interest. I have
refrained from commenting since I have not read *Sexual Personae*;
however, I have read most of the essays collected in *Sex, Art, and
American Culture*, attended the MIT lecture reprinted in that book,
and have seen the divine Miss P on several "serious" interview shows.
I am reminded of a reviewer's comment that what is attractive about Ms
Paglia is her desire to communicate but that what follows a Paglia
banquet is all too often a feeling of hunger. 

I agree that she can dismiss Sterne in a sentence if she wishes, and
if that dismissal leads the reader to Sterne then something positive
occurs. What troubles me is that in promoting these opinions without
often explicating them Paglia only adds to the opinion accreted
environment that surrounds us. 

She is undoubtedly a clever self-promoter. The use of tag-lines,
self-disclosure, and repetition illustrate this. She also has
something important to say at certain times. She speaks to my own
experience although I disagree with many of her conclusions about the
meaning of that experience. She is often both banal and ludicrous in
her social observations. Consider, for example, her *New Republic*
piece on Princess Di's tribulations. Although there are some interesting
observations on the monarchy and modern women, the article is cloaked
with this banal mythology that only works because Paglia has compared
Diana with the godesss Diana. And, it only works because they have the
same name. 

Finally, what seems to be missing is any discussion of Paglia's
scholarship. I believe someone noted early on that it's really 
anthropology and classics and not english or sociology that is at
issue here. I can't tell if anyone is really interested in the
scholarship question. I have only seen one article that takes up the
question. I append part of it below. It's from a review of the Arion
issue where "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders" appeared and the
reviewers consider Paglia at the end of the article. It originally
appeared in *Bryn Mawr Classical Review*, 3.1.1. I think this posting
constitutes "fair use".

Since I am not a classicist I cannot judge the fairness of this
critique of Paglia. Perhaps there are rabble that can evaluate whether
it is fair or not. If anyone wishes the entire review please email and
I will point you to an archived site.

Keith

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   Lastly, an egregious and one hopes exceptional case of le
compte-rendu, c'est moi is provided by Camille Paglia's review of
Halperin's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Winkler's
Constraints of Desire, which occupies almost one-third of this
issue.  The review of Halperin is the mother of all hatchet jobs. 
P. is extremely annoyed that he did not take a psychological
approach, that he followed a French model (Foucault), and that he
has no eye for aesthetics.  Her critique is solipsistic and
perfectly circular.  As in her recent book, P. sees homosexuality
redeemed by art, but this dispensation clearly does not extend to
homosexual American classicists.  The first part of her title,
"Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders," alludes to the brand of
self-promotion supposedly practised by present-day gay scholars. 
P. is not doing too badly herself in this area, and she is
constantly hoist with her own neo-conservative petard when accusing
Halperin of engaging in "ideology."  The anti-French views
constantly and gratuitously expressed extend beyond intellectual
bias to a form of cultural bigotry sported by the author like a
badge of honour.  The attack on Halperin is really an attack on
Foucault, who is said to have made "smirky glibness an art form." 
Glib indeed is the reduction of Halperin's enlightening and
elaborately argued critique of Harold Patzer's Die griechische
Knabenliebe to Patzer's neglect of Foucault!  Halperin's useful
distinction between normative ideal and actual practice with regard
to inter-crural intercourse at Athens (following Dover) is
summarily dismissed by P. who insists on the normative ideal as
actual practice.  Throughout this review, P. indulges in what can
only be called cheap psychologizing, attributing nasty motives that
reflect more on herself than on the persons supposed to harbour
them.  
   In terms of methodology, P. sees the very real space explored
in the interdisciplinary study of Halperin and others as "a
wasteland where wolves run free," where scholarship is turned into
"yuppie entrepreneurship," "chic and hollow."  P. constantly claims
that Halperin does not know his stuff, but her criticism, even
where warranted, loses all credibility because of its bias and
virulence.  Her own insistence throughout on a psychological
approach becomes tiresome and reductive.  (Does Jung's theory of
the anima, for example, really fit Diotima "perfectly"?)  
   P.'s estimation of Winkler as a scholar is somewhat more
positive, though she prefers to ignore or suppress Winkler's own
repeated caveats with regard to the applicability of contemporary
Mediterranean anthropology to antiquity (Constraints, pp. 3, 10,
98, 113, 162).  Her history lessons inserted to counteract the
synchronic view adopted by both Winkler and Halperin are pedantic;
particular historical changes or the passage of time itself do not
necessarily affect basic attitudes.  The persistent role of cunning
in social relations in ancient and modern Greece is a good example,
as convincingly demonstrated by Winkler in his chapter on
"Penelope's Cunning" and elsewhere (see Constraints, Index, s.v.
Ptis).  Winkler like Halperin is accused of not knowing
anthropology, which on inspection turns out to mean that he does
not refer to Frazer or Jane Harrison.  Surprisingly, P. does not
discuss Winkler's use of Herzfeld's work.  

			[....]

   Winkler's third essay, on "Erotic Magical Spells", is one from
which students take away a powerful sense of sexuality as a lived
reality in antiquity, but for P. it shows the "tragic waste of
American talents enslaved to French masters."  His fourth, "The
Education of Chloe," sends her into a paroxysm of rage leading to
the inevitable conclusion, "the rest of us can safely ignore them"
(i.e., the "born-yesterday French-besotted faddists").  P. likes to
profile herself and her reactions ("Oh ship of fools, I said to
myself") and because Winkler not unreasonably considers goats
rank-smelling P. is provoked to object:  "I am personally offended,
since my grandfather loved to shop for goats."  The practice
developed by feminist scholars--present yourself, your background,
your sentiments and your biases--has been hijacked and driven to a
ridiculous extreme.  

                   [....]		

   P.'s back-to-basics proposal for academic reform again suffers
from over-statements and the now familiar obsessions but also
contains some useful criticisms.  The suggestion that humanities
professors should teach subjects they have not taught before,
although hardly new, is a good one:  there is nothing like a new
course to bring about a learning experience for a professor.  P.'s
pious contention that the teaching profession is a "vocation" and
a "ministry" contrasts oddly with her merciless profession-bashing
throughout this review.  Her enthused accounts of her own teaching
efforts in a Sikorsky factory and with minority students recall the
rhetoric of socialism which she so heartily despises.  Occasionally
there is an interesting observation, e.g., "Even leftist professors
these days lack a sense of history."  That preoccupation with
theory sometimes provides a cover for the absence of historical
knowledge has already been noted by Stanley Fish, surely no friend
of P.'s.  Her own concept of history freely mixes decline-and-fall
with dialectics and eternal return.  There is prophecy too in the
statement that "the overall line of Western culture will never
change."  Surprisingly, P. does not seem to be aware of the work of
E.R. Dodds.  P. regularly strikes a Nietzschean pose, offering a
Dionysiac celebration of "nature" versus the repression associated
especially, and predictably, with French culture.
    The review concludes with a call to the new Kulturtraeger, the
"children of the Sixties," to awaken and "clean house."  The
variety of ways in which the Sixties are invoked in this paper
(e.g., pp. 178-9, 182) is a perfect correlative to the confused and
self-contradictory ideas expressed in P.'s program of reactionary
reform.  The publication of this review suggests a great deal about
the current editorial direction of Arion, moving as it does into
the shadows of Leo Strauss and Harold Bloom, P.'s acknowledged
master.  What a spectacular reversal of Arion's aspirations in the
Sixties!

Martin Cropp  
Haijo Westra  
University of Calgary 

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--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
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