In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Camille PagliaRead
I'm a professor of media studies as well as humanities, and I'm an evangelist of popular culture, but when there's only media, then there's going to be a slow debasement of language, and that's what I think we're fighting.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of language amidst the overwhelming presence of media and popular culture.
Camille Paglia argues that as society increasingly prioritizes media and popular culture, the quality and richness of language suffer. She believes that this phenomenon leads to a 'debasement' of language, which is a crucial aspect of human communication and expression, and she positions herself as a defender of language against this cultural trend.
In practice
During a lecture on the impact of social media on communication, this quote underscores the nuances of language.
In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.
We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.
I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.
Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.
Our goal is not so much the imparting of knowledge as the unveiling and developing of spiritual energy.
I had no education whatsoever, and my mother said, 'Oh, you'll get a much better education in life.' I did to some extent, though I always wish I could have tried it.
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