Publisher's note: Camille Paglia, who likes to refer to herself as an
"antifeminist feminist" is one of the most controversial figures
of our time. When Space Coast Review published this interview in March
1995, I had no idea what an immense scoop this would be. Dr. Paglia, who
is inundated with interview requests, usually reserves her venom for such
outlets as 60 Minutes and the New York Times.
Shortly after Space Coast Review published this interview,
Paglia
was the subject of an Esquire magazine cover story in which she was
interviewed by comic Tim Allen (star of TV's Home Improvement). Shortly
thereafter, in May, she was the subject of the prestigious Playboy
interview. According to Playboy:
"It is almost easier to get
through to the president than to Camille Paglia. The litany of
instructions on her answering machine is intentionally intimidating. A
male voice begins, "Due to her pressing obligations as a teacher
and scholar, Professor Paglia cannot personally return calls. American
and Canadian media with official requests should contact her publisher;
international media must contact her agent.. If you do not receive a
response, Professor Paglia is not interested in your proposal.
"A few years ago, no one would have been
interested enough to call. Now, however, the machine answers only one of
the eight lines in Paglia's empire. And the phones ring non-stop. She
may be the most famous social philosopher in the country!"
When Dr. Paglia agreed to this
interview, the only logical choice as interviewer was Jack Nichols, author
of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity, (1975, Penguin
Books). Nichols, whose personal views are diametrically opposed to
Paglia's, was anxious to get a crack at the self-described "academic
rottweiler."
NICHOLS: As the author of Vamps and Tramps, and of the highly
acclaimed Sexual Personae, you've quickly gained a reputation as a learned
but playful thinker. The dust jacket on one of your books describes you as "an academic rottweiler."
Have you allowed this ferocious self-description to fly in order to
intimidate interviewers?
PAGLIA: Well you have to have to remember that I spent 20 years
writing a book, Sexual Personae, that was out for a year without people
knowing who I was. I had no picture on the book and was completely
unknown. It was only one year after that people who were reading my book
asked me to comment for the media.
So all that's happened basically is the media has gotten to
know my real personality. I've been teaching for years. All my students
will attest this is my real personality. People who think that I became
famous because of my attack mode are quite wrong. Sexual Personae again
was virtually anonymous in many ways.
NICHOLS: About your new book: You describe yourself as doing
"yeomen's service in the culture wars." As quickly as you can
I'd like you to name your principal battlefronts starting with what you'd
presently consider the most important one.
PAGLIA: Well, essentially I am a '60s free-speech militant.
Therefore I oppose dogma in all areas: in feminism, gay activism, academic
curriculum, and in French theory. I oppose all ideology and false abstractions.
NICHOLS: American feminism, you say, "is stuck in an
adolescent whining mode, full of Puritanism and suffocating
ideology." What does your self-description as an anti-feminist
feminist mean?
PAGLIA: Well, the term anti-feminist is just one of those
absurdities people use for anyone who's trying to critique a dominant
ideology. I'm a feminist. I feel that I'm true to the roots of feminism as
a progressive reform movement and I'm opposed not to feminism but to the
feminist establishment which seems to me to have a kind of Kremlin
mentality.
Now, I can't do a lot more complaining on this because, you
know, in the four years since I really came on the scene it's obvious I've
helped to inspire a reform movement that is obvious from coast
to coast and therefore most people are not indignant about the...
NICHOLS: In other words, bringing up the issues...
PAGLIA: Yeah, the victim orientation of contemporary feminism is
pretty much understood now and a lot of my language, a lot of my critique
has passed into general usage so I can't be as angry about it as I was four years ago because I have succeeded.
NICHOLS: Would you consider yourself free of ideology?
PAGLIA: Yes. I think I'm someone, I'm very eclectic. I pick and
choose from many different important thinkers in history. I think that is
the whole power of my work. I follow no one dominant ideology. And that's
why I left the Catholic Church 25 years ago, because I hate that kind of
total ideology.
NICHOLS: You seem to like what you call (quote) "an eerie,
sultry, tableau of jaded androgynous creatures, trapped in a decadent
sexual underground." You call sadomasochistic images
"hypnotic"—and you celebrate a "perverse and knowing
world" as seen in Mapplethorpe's photographs.
You call Mapplethorpe "today's pagan priest of
art." Is this why you also claim that your view of human nature has
been formed in large part by the Marquis de Sade, not to mention Freud and
Nietzsche? (p.105)
PAGLIA: Sexual Personae, my first book, followed one of the most
important things I followed through Western culture—this thing of sado-masochism.
I am not a practicing S&M anything. My real sex life is rather boring,
probably. But I just discovered that theme and by the time that book came
out it was amazing how it was part of the general culture, through
Mapplethorpe's images and a lot of other things that were going on in
movies.
I would just say that for me I follow the philosophy of the
Marquis de Sade, that is I do not believe as Rousseau claims that we are
born good and that we're made bad by corrupt society or rather we're
born...
NICHOLS: In other words, you believe like the Catholic Church
teaches that we have an original sin.
PAGLIA: Yeah. For me it's not sin, but rather aggression. I
don't believe in God so I believe that we're born with a
tendency toward aggression.
NICHOLS: Two questions here...
PAGLIA: Wait, wait a minute. Let me just complete that thought
and say that I believe in the rational code of ethics. That is, we have an obligation to curb our instincts toward barbarism and
so I'm not just saying "let it rip." I'm saying we're born with
a tendency for aggression but it is civilized for us to restrain
ourselves.
NICHOLS: OK, I do ask about that a little later on. You hope to
fuse realism into your thought. Elizabeth Taylor— "without any
sexual ambiguity in her personae"—you call "the greatest
actress in film history." Without demeaning Ms. Taylor, wouldn't it
be possible to say that this opinion of yours is merely an explosion, not
of the realism you hope to own, but of your own personal taste?
PAGLIA: (Laughs) Yes, my philosophy follows that of Oscar Wilde
and his master Walter Pater. I believe that a critic's, someone of strong
sensibilities, strong individuality, function is to express your personal
taste very vividly in order to help others form their personal taste.
NICHOLS: Thinkers like yourself, or like me, would hope to be
demonstrably realistic, but may, in fact, merely be writing about the
colors of our own developed sexual/ personal growth. Your writing revolves
much around the idea that we are all wearing various personas, or masks,
even though there's a kernel of self in each of us that is primarily
genetic.
Would you agree with the late David B. Feinberg, author of
Eighty Sixed and of Queer and Loathing, who says: "There is no
literal truth. Truth is a philosophical invention one can only approach.
All writing is lies. Good writing is lies skillfully told."
What hides behind Camille's writing mask? What can you say to
convince me that you're not just another talking head, perhaps a guilty
Roman Catholic girl, brainwashed by those nuns to think that human nature
revels in degradation, or that your vision of art isn't just simply a
celebration of the sadomasochistic realm which, as you write, you believe lies in the deepest level of human nature.
PAGLIA: Well, number one: that would be a misreading of Sexual
Personae which argues that...
NICHOLS: But you did say that you thought that sadomasochism lies
at the deepest level...
PAGLIA: Yes, that's correct, but it's a misreading. I say that
we must honor equally Apollo and
Dionysus—that is the urge toward freedom and sexual license and the urge
toward order and restraint. I'm always talking about creative duality.
It's like Yin and Yang.
When you balance these two opposing forces in our nature,
now, as far as being brainwashed by the nuns, I never got along with the
nuns and had open confrontations with them. That's one reason I left the
Catholic Church. I did not go to Catholic school.
NICHOLS: But you did speak of a, of a sadomasochism lying at the
deepest levels of our natures. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it
lies, perhaps not in everybody's but at the deepest core of your own
nature?
PAGLIA: No. Not at all. What I'm arguing is that we are
essentially animals, that we we have evolved through history...there's...
NICHOLS: So here let me...
PAGLIA: Wait, wait, wait, let me complete my thought. What I
said in Sexual Personae is that man is, mankind is very complex, that we
are hybrid beings. That we are still animals and un-evolved. That this is
what Freud would call the unconscious realm of the id and the libido and
so on, but that we also have to have a super ego, that for some reason we
can not explain there is something in us that strives for transcendence.
Whether it is a soul...
I do not believe in God so I do not believe there is a soul,
but I do have a kind of mystical, spiritual bent and I've constantly said
in my work, and close readers will be aware of it, that this conflict
within led to the great achievements of mankind but also to our
deep neurosis, our deep unhappiness, so that is a correct reading of my
work.
NICHOLS: You say that you believe that aggression and violence
are primarily not learned but instinctual.
PAGLIA: Yes, but that is ...
Home Imagine
MediaHumor Factory
PhotoContact
|
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from
Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the
Fundamentalists
Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays