© Michael Lionstar
I discovered Camille Paglia's work when I was pursuing my undergraduate arts education at The University of Adelaide, South Australia, in the early 2000s. I was deeply disillusioned with the courses in my arts degree and their monomaniacal focus on social constructionism, and was looking for criticism of Michel Foucault on the internet. I stumbled across a 1991
op-ed written by Paglia for
The New York Times, in which she described the followers of Lacan, Derrida and Foucault
, as "fossilized reactionaries," and "the perfect prophets for the weak, anxious academic personality." I was hooked.
It wasn't long before I discovered that my university's library contained each of her books, including the essay collections
Vamps and Tramps and
Sex, Art and American Culture. For the final year of my arts degree, (before pursuing my studies in psychology) I spent the bulk of my time at the university reading Paglia in the library. She was like a revelation. Her work was subversive but erudite, and she synthesized insights made in the realm of the arts, ancient history and folk biology - something that no other scholar of the humanities had attempted to do. Thirteen years later, it is an honour to be able to interview Camille Paglia for
Quillette.
Comment: It's not without irony that topless anti-Trump groupies outraged about his 'grab 'em by the p****' assertion about female groupies are now throwing themselves at him.