A Neat Kind of Gal

I was first introduced to Camille Paglia when I was in college during a discussion on the post-modern phenomena of feminism. She had much respect from my professor who himself was an art historian and archaeologist. Reading her contributions to the then nascent internet magazine Salon.com after college, I understood why my professor shared an admiration for her, since she concerns herself with scholarship in the humanities. Somehow she would combine her passion for the study of art and poetry with feminism and politics in general . It was this combination that made her jottings such fun to read, her complex and internally contradictory personality so intriguing. Instead of employing Marxist structures and post-modern semniotics to express rather orthodox views about women and power, she is very plain spoken and observes real-world people and events to come to some original yet traditional conclusions. She's a defender of the great cannon of Western literature and philosophy and an antagonist of contemporary intellectual fads. She has a populist streak to her, and much of her perspective is colored by her parents' and grandparents' experience as immigrants. Her lesbianism sits in the middle of all this stew and though her political positions lean to the left, she possesses such an open mind so as to absorb conservative arguments. She's all over the place essentially, but her personality is so full of inherent tension that her statements are often delightfully unpredictable.

Make some time to read this in-depth interview of this fascinating person.

Thanks to No Pasaran! for the tip