Camille Paglia on Post-Structualism: Debunking the Deconstructionists. (Contrast Post-Modernism)

hello forgive my ignorance but could you please explain what post-structuralism is oh I love that okay I love it well it is simply a system that began with with there are three big names made of French theorists who kind of took over American academia in the 1970s and 80s and they were it was it was Jacque Derrida Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault okay and I you know I was on a campaign against them for in this whole style for a very long time and and I think you know we managed to get rid of Lacan buried I think God but Foucault is very very entrenched okay it's a it's a long I mean if you can I my first essay my long hair my long expose post-racialism it's called junk bonds and corporate raiders it's in my first essay collection okay which is sex art American culture and I and I and I and I show okay and quote you know from it so you can see what is what it's like and but basically it's a system of analyzing everything in the world literature and history and everything from the point of view of language alone okay it's based on what to me is about moded linguistic system associated with a feminine so sheer okay it's completely unloaded right and so what you're getting now in gender studies everywhere in gender studies in college campuses thanks to Judith Butler okay the post structure was all right you're getting this idea that every that every everything in gender is merely something that's been refracted through language there's no biological substrate them that you know that that defines gender in any way we are blank slates at birth we are inscribed by society's pressures okay so this is it's making their lowest idea and goes back to vector Berlin I mean it's like it's not worth even going into it except that is absolutely epidemic everywhere okay and it's just and I keep on repeating this it's destroyed in the humanities actually destroyed right there's no there's absolutely no room for appreciation celebration of Arts okay psychology there's no psychology left you know and you anywhere okay there's not even a sense of history okay because in spite what all the post-structuralist think Foucault was absolutely ignorant about history he knew nothing about anything before the Enlightenment just like Susan Sontag okay the two of them should have liked to have been together hand in hand okay into the sunset okay I'm sorry okay I didn't throw away our Sun to Sun take admirers here sorry okay and there's no there's no way to explain exactly why people you know have it we're so credulous about SoCo except that and they're not going to be interested right the old new criticism that was in place when I was in college focused exclusively on the internal qualities of literary works okay and there is no doubt that that late new criticism that which was going on when I was in college what had become much too narrow okay and did not allow for psychological exploration or historical context so definitely those two things should have been added to the new criticism instead what came in into the into the vacuum was this okay which actually it only works for socialism only works on narrative it only works on the novel if it works at all which I think I say does not okay it's all about narrative well therefore the post structuralism can do nothing with poetry nothing can do a single thing with a poem can it can do a single thing with an artwork at one point in a Foucault quotes of has a Velazquez painting so out of every post structuralist earlier I mentioned this is one painting oh please okay and yet again he knew nothing nothing about the earth so to me it's completely valueless as a system but it's absolutely compulsory post structuralism if you expect to rise in in America you know in American academia day in the humanities absolutely compulsory and I am so lucky to be teaching at the art schools where we are free of that plate completely free of it now and then a young fact arrive okay and I go oh no here comes okay and then they get big they don't want to be me at the University of the Arts because we deal with art we don't deal with Foucault we deal with art we actually deal with the with you know with performance whether you know with with with with music wouldn't you know with you know what's up with with the real material world you know crafts and fibers and and metals and all those things that definite oaken can't explain okay because it's all about language all right so then it's something they all leave and they drift across the river and they end up at the Annenberg or at Penn huh all right so let them all cluster there I say okay dr. Pat Lea you're one of my favorite authors you may be glad or sorry to know that right next to you in my bookshelf with my various Bibles which I like above and Moby Dick's below is Foucault oh you're an admirer I admire Foucault I am to be a contrarian to the contrary do you read him in French or English only English all right I'm not that erudite yeah so the validity that I get from Foucault is that I see the rise of various institutions prisons hospitals madness I think that his way of analyzing it makes sense even though it is based on language and not on some synthesis of the Apollonian of the Dionysian I'd like you to comment on that well I points now in junk Bronson corporate raiders that the analysis of prisons it's not something that Foucault invented okay that is the system of prisons was already explored by Emile Durkheim and that's one of my criticisms of him okay is that people who read Foucault believed that he is making these things up himself and he isn't I myself had already read Durkheim okay before I came to Foucault and that's why I realized that this is like just a little fragment of Durkheim that's been spun out okay and the same thing Erving Goffman it was a huge influence on me stationed himself in everyday life okay very great American sociologist it is fucose primary source that he also hid okay so in case after case after case right I would maintain if I could speak you long enough okay that the points that you think that you like that are coming from Foucault actually he had stolen okay from else elsewhere okay and forget Foucault and just go read Durkheim etc okay you know I feel all Camille was even Blake for Evans sake William Blake in his Brittany the great Romantic poets okay an artist okay in his system okay here's the whole mental system the conceptual framework of Foucault okay all right sort it to me you know Foucault is a fraud okay you know I'm sorry I didn't mean to say that okay admirer okay and I think it's simply that I had done so much research already in reading in sociology you know before okay which is why I go to miasma is insufficient

Channel: Rafe Heydel-Mankoo

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Length: 7min 12sec (432 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020