Interesting read. The summary of Paglia really reminds me of when I was doing work trying to dissect Jordan Peterson and his project of essentially trying to take suburban common-sense around topics of gender and meaning and dress them up with a more academic aesthetic. The sure which of us suffered which of us suffered more for having to read our respective tomes, *Sexual Personae* or *Maps of Meaning*.
Well said on Paglia. She did click for me a couple years ago when I was watching a bunch of classic film noirs and suddenly realized every single one was about a man coming back from the war and being swallowed up by the monstrous chaotic feminine. Sexual Personae is hit or miss but I think the closing essay on Emily Dickinson is one of the all-time greats. You walk around in a daze seeing skies full of blood after reading that one.
Yeah, like her mentor Bloom I think she has a solid thesis about a particular set of genres (romantic poetry, the register of the epic that classic Hollywood taps into), which she over-universalizes. Imo shes at her best writing about poetry, but I find her last convincing on novels if still interesting.
Great stuff! Considering how Noami Wolf turned out, perhaps Paglia's brand of contrarianism is not so bad after all! I still believe she is a useful counterweight to Dworkin et al, even if the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
No, youre not wrong about Naomi Wolff. I like Dworkin more than you might think! Similar to Adorno, there’s a purity to her thought that I admire even if overall her program is mostly unworkable. Paglia is closer to that kind of feminism than she’s generally acknowledged, with the values inverted somewhat.
I have to admit I've not read Dworkin's literary criticism. My problem with her (although probably more with MacKinnon) is that although mostly unworkable, their feminist statist project has been very influential from the Nordic model of criminalising the buying of sex to the terf warfs. And as I've discovered with Sister Simone, even purity can be taken too far.
Paglia -> Ishiguro -> Brand New
Interesting read. The summary of Paglia really reminds me of when I was doing work trying to dissect Jordan Peterson and his project of essentially trying to take suburban common-sense around topics of gender and meaning and dress them up with a more academic aesthetic. The sure which of us suffered which of us suffered more for having to read our respective tomes, *Sexual Personae* or *Maps of Meaning*.
Well said on Paglia. She did click for me a couple years ago when I was watching a bunch of classic film noirs and suddenly realized every single one was about a man coming back from the war and being swallowed up by the monstrous chaotic feminine. Sexual Personae is hit or miss but I think the closing essay on Emily Dickinson is one of the all-time greats. You walk around in a daze seeing skies full of blood after reading that one.
Yeah, like her mentor Bloom I think she has a solid thesis about a particular set of genres (romantic poetry, the register of the epic that classic Hollywood taps into), which she over-universalizes. Imo shes at her best writing about poetry, but I find her last convincing on novels if still interesting.
Great stuff! Considering how Noami Wolf turned out, perhaps Paglia's brand of contrarianism is not so bad after all! I still believe she is a useful counterweight to Dworkin et al, even if the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
No, youre not wrong about Naomi Wolff. I like Dworkin more than you might think! Similar to Adorno, there’s a purity to her thought that I admire even if overall her program is mostly unworkable. Paglia is closer to that kind of feminism than she’s generally acknowledged, with the values inverted somewhat.
I have to admit I've not read Dworkin's literary criticism. My problem with her (although probably more with MacKinnon) is that although mostly unworkable, their feminist statist project has been very influential from the Nordic model of criminalising the buying of sex to the terf warfs. And as I've discovered with Sister Simone, even purity can be taken too far.