"There is something in my book to offend absolutely everybody. I am proabortion, pro the legal use of drugs, propornography, child pornography, snuff films. And I am going after these things until Gloria Steinem screams."
The speaker -- at nonstop, sewing-machine speed -- is Camille Paglia, contrarian academic and feminist bete noire, and her 1990 book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press), is the most explosive tome to emerge from academe in quite some time. The book is about many things -- paganism, pop culture, androgyny, sexual conflicts -- but what has drawn the media with magnetic force is the author's contempt for modern feminists. Paglia writes with freshness and blithe arrogance, and she does not hesitate to hurl brazen insults. She accuses author Germaine Greer, for example, of becoming "a drone in three years," sated with early success. Susan Sontag is another victim of celebrity. Princeton feminist Diana Fuss's output is "just junk -- appalling!"
Along with the zingers, Paglia articulates positions that many people of both genders seem to want to hear these days. To them feminism has gone quite far enough, and they like Personae's neoconservative cultural message: Men have done the work of civilization and can take credit for most of its glories. Women are powerful too, but as the inchoate forces of nature are powerful. Religion and marriage are historically the best defenses against chaos.
Such theories have aroused profound displeasure among feminist authors. For one thing, as Teresa L. Ebert at the State University of New York, Albany, points out, they were caught napping by Paglia. "She wasn't taken seriously, but her attacks are part of Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's conservatism," says Ebert. "They mean a backlash against women. Paglia is reviving old stereotypes with new energy." Harvard's Helen Vendler says Paglia "lives in hyperbole. It is a level of discourse appropriate to politics, sermons, headlines. She should be on talk shows, talking to Geraldo." She probably will be.
In fairness it should be said that nothing about Personae was calculated to bring its author notoriety. The book was rejected by an honor roll of prestigious publishers. But when success finally came, nine years after the manuscript was completed, the star was ready and waiting to be born. Personae climbed to seventh place on the paperback best-seller list, a true rarity for a scholarly book.
Paglia is the new media princess, and acts the part. When she accepts a speaking engagement now, she generally shows up with two massive bodyguards togged out in black leather jackets. She has been featured in the New Republic, Playboy, New York, NYQ (for New York Queer), Russian, Japanese and French publications.
One reason for her high profile is that Paglia has bristling opinions on subjects other than feminism -- particularly education. She advocates a core curriculum based mostly on the classics and rails against what she considers politicized frills, such as most African-American studies and the currently chic French theorists Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Never one to let consistency get in her way, Paglia has a strong libertarian streak -- on subjects like pornography -- that go straight to her '60s coming-of-age.