Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson | Camille Paglia

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson | Camille Paglia | Stunning

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Sexual Personae: A...

	Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson Camille Paglia Vintage Books, 1991 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

An Erotics of Art

Way back when Susan Sontag was still an important critic, she said, "In place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." Well, here it is.

The basic thesis of this book is simple, though its consequences are far-ranging. She maintains that aesthetic principles are rooted in the artist's perception of and ideas about nature, sex, and women, (which are inextricable because, as she says, "sex is a subset of nature," and women have always been identified as a kind of avatar of nature). Men are nature's exiles and subjects, and therefore have had to create science and art as protections against it. But art also serves as an important link to nature; much of it serves in a religious capacity. She maintains that the Pagan cults of earth-worship were not exterminated by Judeo-Christian monotheism, but were rather transmuted into aesthetics. This pagan strain in art is what she traces, from classical antiquity in Greece and Rome to its rebirth amid Christianity's domain in the Renaissance, and again in the so-called Age of Reason, where we know it as Romanticism. Paglia believes we are still in the Romantic age (and not the Postmodern), though we know it mainly in popular culture, especially Hollywood films and rock music. (Movie stars are frequently referenced, and she notoriously compares Lord Byron to Elvis Presley.) She also convincingly demonstrated that some of the most revered works of art are chock full of perversity, a fact to which we remain blind, even in our sophisticated, cynical age. Moralism, both conservative and liberal, is not only a constraining influence on the arts, but causes us to misunderstand them.

Needless to say, these ideas are not popular in the academic world. The brilliant first chapter is called "Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art" and it overturns the bulk of modernist and postmodern ideas about each of those.

What I love about Paglia is that she does not process art in a purely intellectual way, which is a temptation (or deficiency) for the critic, and would be suicide for an artist. She is keenly attuned to the spiritual aspect of art, and can articulate the experience of it with a lucidity that is frequently awesome. Paglia reasserts the primacy of aesthetics in an academic milieu which understands nothing except through ideology (called, in academe, "theory"). She also combines both Romantic and Classic sensibilities. She is clearly sympathetic to Romanticism, but much of Sexual Personae details the ways in which the Romantic desire for infinite freedom is inevitably thwarted by the reality of nature.

Paglia's criticism is at her best here in her chapter on Emily Dickenson, whom she calls "Madame de Sade", and who seems to have been misunderstood even by her admirers for over a hundred years. This is the book's final chapter, and it is so incisive and revelatory that it makes "deconstructive" criticism look like bloated, impotent sophistry.

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Stunning

The pages of this book crackle with brilliance, audacity, egomania, exaggeration, wit, half-truths, whole truths, breath taking insights, razor sharp criticisms, etc. It is as much about the titannic intellect of Paglia as it is about art. Her feminism, deeply rooted in biology and nature, rather than absurdly elitist women's studies departments, is all you need to know about feminism that really matters. An amazing book.

Impressive Ideas

Camille's ideas are very original. The book combines philosphy, psichology, mithology, art, literature and antrophology to understand the basis of our society, specially the diferences between genders. The first two chapters are spectacular. After that, the book becomes too specific, but still worth reading.

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The Attack of the 50 Foot Lesbian

Paglia is a hard read. She is everything you love to hate and as a practicing lesbian she stands out in the field of feminists railing against their vulnerabilities. Personally, I thought the interview she gave Playboy years ago was much much more telling.

She is 'absolutely miiltant' about much of her stand against various aspects of the Feminist platform of ideals. She supports the belief that strippers have ultimate power over hapless males, and that prostitutes enjoy their work. She maintains that the more a woman takes off her clothes, the more powerful she becomes, and that the bulk of oppression against 'erotic dancers' comes from the suit and briefcase class of rising woman stars who are repulsed by the realization that a woman with animal instincts finely honed can with no college training at all make as much money on a hopping weekend in a strip club as they with their pedigrees make all week in an office.

It is not a book for the weak of senses nor the uneducated. Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and profess she does! She is a 'take no prisoners' crusader. Her book is her battle plan.

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Masculist review

I am pretending this book was written by a man. That's why I gave it three stars, which doesn't include the extra star or two women writers of non-fiction usually automatically get.

Depending on the author, reading their book can make the reader feel like he (the reader..that's right, HE) is being intelectually stimulated, while at the same time getting muddle-headed and confused. That is definitely the case with Sexual Personae. Oh well, I guess it's just me, but I like to have the material presented in a more organized manner. (maybe organized books are usually written by men, you know, the linear thinkers who always leave the toilet seat up).

But still, I found the book to be informative, at many levels - historically, artisically, philosophically..maybe not that great a source on psychology though. Paglia seems to take a gynocentric (woman-centered) view of men's psychology, like when she says that the reason men create is because of some issue they have with their mothers. (Testosterone's a driving force..what's the problem? No need to psychologize). Oh well, at least she comes out against man-bashing, and hateful feminist ideologues. In fact, those are the best parts of the book, where she speaks against these. Feminists hate her so much, they have sent her death threats (that must be their way of obtaining "equality").

[edit]
Earlier I said Paglia's writing style is similar to that of Harold Bloom's. However, the more I read Bloom, the more I realize that each author is confusing in his/her own unique way. Paglia tends to write like she is having random racing thoughts, so it is sometimes hard to link sentences and paragraphs together; whereas Bloom's style is to take uncommon words only an academic would know, and use these to salt and pepper the text sentences which are, to use the best word I can think of, "convoluted" (yet somehow very astute).

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