Talk

A Camille Paglia reader

If you are a neophyte in the world of Camille Paglia then this guide may be of use to you.

Sandor Ferenczi: Hungarian psychologist who corresponded with Freud.

apotropaion - something used to ward off fears.

Heracleitus: greek philosopher known for his once derided theory that everything is connected. He believed that fire was the origin of all things.

chthonian of relating to the underworld

Dionysian vs Apollonian. Two fundamental impulses. Apollonian representing all that is good and harmonious. Dionysian alluding to the passion, change and destruction.

touchstone: the intrinsic property of any thing.

The daemonism of chthonian nature is the west's dirty secret. Modern humanists made the "tragic sense of life" the touchstone of mature understanding. They defines man's mortality and the transience of time as literature's supreme subjects. In this I again see evasion and even sentimentality. The tragic sense of life is a partial response to experience. It is a reflex of the wests's resistance to and misapprehension of nature, compounded by the errors of liberalism, which in its Romantic nature philosophy has followed the Rousseauist Wordsworth rather than the daemonic Coleridge

A little background might help. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century) was the originator of "Romantic" sensibilities. He argued for the estabilishment of feeling rather than reason as the basis of theology and politics. Rousseau said we should "go back to nature" implying the primeval human being was in harmony with nature. His Social Contract became the inspiration of the leaders of the French revolution with its emphasis on participatory democracy. I am unsure how his words inspired the head-chopping, guillotine-using free-for-all.

All I know of Coleridge was that he was a opium addicted poet. Maybe if he had been addicted to meth or speed he might have more cheerful poetry?

Aeschylus, a 5th century B.C. playwright wrote the trilogy Oresteia
mimesis: imitation.
Euripides was another playwright and a peer of Aeschylus.
agon: conflict especially between protagonists of a literary work

Camille Paglia argues that western literary works possess suspence and climax unlike eastern works which are just horizontal events tied together. She finds parallel between the climax (the plot of the story) and the male sexual climax and blames this focus on the climax the result of male obsession with sexual climax. I disagree. There are plenty of eastern works that have a story and a plot, (Ramayana, Mahabharata) and frankly without a climax a story will be inspid. so there.

Camille goes on to state that in the East: buddhism, chinese philosophy what have you, yin-yang includes male/female balance of power. The Indian goddess Kali is both a creator and destroyer. In the west the last society to worship a female God was Minoan Crete. She says the pre-dominant influence turned out to be the warrior culture of the mycenaean. Camille mentions the Virgin Mary at another point but fails to use her as an example of female worship in the Western Culture. The Catholic church places Mary in an exalted position. This is not mirrored by the Eastern Orthodox church.

Camille presents a highly readable harangue on women and their unfortunate position in society. She brings in the concept of vagina dentata (vagina with teeth) that renders man less than what he was before his encounter with the female. Another excerpt:

Male homosexuality maybe the most valorous of attempts to evade the femme fatale and to defeat nature. By turning away from the Medusan mother, whether in honor or detestation of her, the male homosexual is one of the great forgers of absolutist western identity. But of course nature has won, as she always does, by making disease the price of promiscous sex

This excerpt riles me more than some of the other things Camille has said. Why is this logic any different than that of narrow minded religious fanatics who claim that disease is God's punishment for homosexual and promiscous people. In anycase disease is the price for unsafe sex not for promiscous sex.

Camille also talks about Michelangelo's Pieta which shows the young virgin mary holding her martyr son Jesus Christ. Camille weaves a tale of Oedipus and chthonian nature of woman and man's Freudian lust for his mother into this tale. She says this picture depicts as Freud claimed the man's primary incestual relation with his mother. It displays the woman chthonian nature with her offspring. Particularly striking is that Mary is young in the sculpture.

Athena: daughter of Zeus. Virgin goddess of intelligent activity, reason, art and literature. Born as a result of a splitting headache Zeus had. She sprung out of his forehead full grown in a suit of armor.

Artemis (aka Diana): daughter of Zeus. Virgin goddess of chastity, virginity, hunt, moon, and the natural environment. Twin sister of Apollo. The story of Diana and Actaeonis as follows: One day Acataeon while separated from his hunting party chanced upon Diana and her pre-menarche nymphs. She converted him into a stag and he was subsequently killed by his own hunting dogs. This myth reveals the Greek fear of females who they feared possesed the ability to capture and destroy them

Apollo: Son of Zeus. God of music, light and truth. Apollo drove his chariot (the sun) across the sky.

couvade Ritual in some cultures where the father , after his child is born takes to bed rest as if he was in labor.

Aphrodite: patron of love and beauty. Her birth is chronicled by Hesiod when Uranus's mutilated genitals come crashing into a body of water and splash the foam.

Some interesting quotes from Camille:

Zeus too is hermaphrodite: he has the power of self-insemination and procreation or conception which in English as in Latin has the double meaning of pregnancy and comprehension. Egyption Khepera, the mastrubatory first mover, is shown coiled in a uroboros-like circle, feet touch head from which leaps a tiny human figure

scatology: interest in or treatment of obscene material in literature
the biologically oriented study of excretement.

tumescence: The state of being tumescent(swollen) i.e. readiness for sexual activity. (vascular congestion of sexual organs == blood fills 'em up)

transubstantiation: the miracle by which the elements of the eucharist (bread and wine) become the body and blood of jesus during the catholic mass.

omophagy: eating of raw flesh.

Camille's theory:

Dionysus is identification, Apollo objectification. Dionysus is the empathic, the sympathetic emotion transporting us into other people, other places, other times. Apollo is the hard, cold separatism of western personality and categorical thought. Dionysus is energy , ecstasy, hysteria, promiscuity , emotionalism - heedless indiscriminateness of idea or practice. Apollo is obsessivesness, voyeurism, idolatry, fascism - frigidity and aggression of world seeking cathexis. Here, there everywhere , it invests itself in the perishable things of flesh, silk, marble and metal, materializations of mony is impossible. Our brains are split, and brain is split from the body. The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains. Art reflects on and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy. In the west, Apollo and Dionysis strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that leads to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Every excess breeds its counteraction. So western culture swings from point to point on its complex cycle, pouring forth its lavish tributes of art, word and deed. We have littered the world with grandiose achievements. Our story is vast, lurid, and unending.

Palaestra: Greek gymnasium
Phaedro: Plato shows how contemporary Greek thought revered the aesthetically pleasing.

Francesco Petrarch met Laura in Avignon. Her beauty captivated him and the Italian scholar wrote several poems addressing her beauty.

Dante met Beatrice (who was 9 years old) and composed several poems on her.

apotheosis: raise to divine status | perfect example

Sappho was on born on the NE Aegean island of Lesbos. Sappho was well known for her vast work of poems some of which have survived to this day. Her poem to Aphrodite may be one reason she is identified with the lesbian movement. While it is not obvious what her sexuality was (most likely bisexual) it has become an issue long after her death.

Catallusalso wrote a bunch of poems

Iphis is another example of the sexual confusion. Iphis was born a woman and then changed into a man so she could marry another girl.

Misc - somewhat related
An Upstate New York mother has her own opinion on Camille Paglia's Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendence
A good article on the end of feminism, or atleast as we once knew it.
Contemporary Critical Theory

Posted at June 26, 2002 11:41 PM