Paglia, Camille

▪ 1994

      The controversial academic, aesthete, and self-described feminist Camille Paglia enunciated her unorthodox views on sexuality and the development of culture and art in Western civilization in two books, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (1992). Her public persona and iconoclastic views enraged many academics and feminists and titillated audiences of television talk shows and college lecture halls as well as those who read her magazine essays and op-ed contributions.

      A self-styled in-your-face Italian-American rebel with working-class immigrant grandparents, Paglia was born on April 2, 1947, in Endicott, N.Y., the daughter of a professor of Romance languages. Valedictorian of her class at the State University of New York at Binghamton (B.A., 1968), she became a disciple of outspoken critic and educator Harold Bloom at Yale University, where she received a Ph.D. in 1974. A teacher of literature at Bennington (Vt.) College (1972-80) and Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. (1980), she was visiting lecturer at Yale (1981-83; 1984). From 1984 she was affiliated with the University of the Arts, Philadelphia (formerly the College of Performing Arts), where from 1991 she was professor of humanities.

      Paglia expounded a theory, based on comparisons from Greek myths, of the duality of Western culture: the rational, orderly Apollonion aspect of society feels threatened by the Dionysian, chaotic forces of nature, which are murky and earthbound (her term is chthonic). An admirer of the works of Sigmund Freud, Sir James Frazier, and Charles Darwin, Paglia claimed that perversions in sexual behaviour came not from social injustice but from natural forces. For example, Paglia declared rape to be a sexual, not a violent, act, adding that women should avoid situations that might invite rape.

      She posited that men develop cerebral achievement in order to separate themselves from the mother and her inexorable psychological domination. According to Paglia, "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." Women, the keepers of the hearth, are chthonic; women writers are unable to rise to the heights of Apollonion designs to which men have access.

      Paglia advocated the decriminalization of prostitution, abortion, drug usage, and pornography. She urged the revamping of the U.S. educational system by institution of a core curriculum based primarily on the classics. She also called for the abolition of such highly politicized college majors as African-American studies and women's studies.

      At odds with what she called the feminist establishment, Paglia celebrated the feminism demonstrated by unsentimental, independent, "ask-no-quarter, give-no-quarter" women, such as the aviator Amelia Earhart and the actress Katharine Hepburn. A self-proclaimed bisexual who celebrated decadence in its many guises, she also professed admiration for rock stars Madonna and Keith Richards and writers Oscar Wilde and the Marquis de Sade.

      (NAOMI BERNARDS POLONSKY)

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