I still love my quotes
(download)
Just discovered this doc...Still believe in these quotes I gathered about 2 years ago...Am I stagnating?
Andre’s Posture |
Mild Blogging |
(download)
Just discovered this doc...Still believe in these quotes I gathered about 2 years ago...Am I stagnating?
“Male homosexuality, pushing outward into risky, alien territory, is progressive and – overall - intellectually stimulating.”
Camille Paglia - Italianamerican pagan and cultural iconoclast strongly identifies with gay men. To the extent that she is often attracted to them - from the perspective of a gay male. Professor Paglia has been upturning conventional thinking in academe since her collegiate youth in Upstate New York while writing Sexual Personae - her fearless, illuminating expedition into Western culture. She’s also a huge fan of Madonna. Her office at the University of Arts at Philadelphia is distinguished by two features: a Babylonian erection of books and a colour photograph of La Ciccione in a bustier that could compete with America's nuclear deterrent.
The nemesis of white, upper-middle class feminists and Suzanne Vega aficionados alike, Paglia rejects French Theory - Foucault knew fuck-all - that constituted the lit bateau of 1970s feminism, instead embracing Nietzsche's postmodernisn and divorcing herself from what she perceived to be that school’s increasingly anti-male ideology. She was instantly unfashionable. Banished to the Siberia of the academic, it took her twenty years to return. Believing that feminism has led men into becoming contemporary eunuchs, Paglia wants to reclaim masculinity to reinform the political correction we have arrived at today:
“We want a hard penis. We want masculine vigour. To men I say: ‘Get It On!’ To women I say, ‘Deal With It!’
Well, one doesn't want to be strapped into a time machine and shot backwards to an age of archaic, Sicilian machismo but neither does one wish to see men in American Tan tights all the time. She expresses a desire to "restore the penis back to its former position of centre-stage." I know a few people who would gladly put in free overtime to help Ms Paglia with the hydraulic crane. They are all female.
She was universally upbraided in the furore surrounding her comments on date rape:
“The uncontrollable aspect of male sexuality is part of what makes sex interesting. And yes, sometimes it can lead to rape in some situations.”
I think what alarmed people was the declaration that men's penises somehow possess an unrestrainable autonomy that operates independently from the will. In some cases, it does. Moreover, there was a widespread misapprehension that she was condoning rape. In truth, she was defending the quintessential freedom of women (or men, for that matter) to wear a micro-skirt, to get drunk and to hitch a ride in Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle - providing they acknowledge the risk and accept the onus of personal responsibility in doing so.
If contemporary liberalism has been untruthful to women about the world - and about men - Paglia volubly reminds us of that fact. She examines gender, sexuality and feminism through the prism of art and cultural history, as set forth in one of her best books, Sex, Art, And American Culture. On popular music she notes that even Greek Tragedy never gave full expression to the Dionysian impulse - the uninhibited, irrational and orgiastic self - until rock’n’roll squeezed into its first box-fresh leather catsuit. That’s something you’d rarely hear within Viognier-sipping intellectual circles. Further, here is a woman who unselfconsciously namechecks Hitchcock’s The Birds and Proust in the same breath. Sound bite queen, 'outlaw' polemicist, some of her best work is while extemporising over the telephone - possibly going into raptures over Keith Richard. The fraternity and the media is undecided as to whether La Paglia is an inspired tour guide or one of the great intellectuals of the late 20th century. What is certain is that she is one hell of a Motormouth Maybelline.
I love trying out new stuff and posterous is my baby for the moment. Still lots to put on here. Thoughts and mostly all the stuff I like around the internet!
Mild, easy, non-offensive blogging.
