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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ C A M I L L E+P A G L I A
Dear Camille:
Do you feel that the word "community" is losing its meaning? The word seems
to be in constant use by every Joe in the street: the "gay community," the
"Hispanic community," the "African-American community" etc. I believe the
word is being misused because it creates an instant, false monolith, easily
invoked for political purposes and one-dimensional ideologies.
I believe there is no "gay community" or "African-American community" in the
same way that there is no "female community." Don't you think that the only
real way people can be called a "community" is when they share hard,
tangible, practical goals (as in a local PTA, for instance, or water
board), but not when they merely share accidents of birth, i.e. gender, race
or sexuality?
Impatient in New York Dear Impatient:
Your excellent question, with its searching critique of politically correct
formulas, demonstrates the kind of independence of mind for which Salon
readers are increasingly renowned.
The widespread use of "community" in the way you cite definitely has a fascist
edge to it. "Community standards" have been arbitrarily invoked to define
"indecency" (that is, to censor); to draft and enforce draconian campus speech
codes; and to weed out from college faculties anyone who doesn't coddle
American students and tell them how wonderful they are.
Invariably, the people who speak loftily of the gay, Hispanic or African-American "community" are paleoliberals who are blind to the centrist political
evolution of the past 30 years and who ruthlessly suppress dissent within
their own group. They are enemies of democratic individualism. In stressing
what you rightly call the "false monolith" of collective yet partisan
identity, they are heirs to old-school Marxists who, in the name of global
"solidarity," foment class warfare.
Ultimately, there is a sentimental longing for tribal purity in all this, as
well as a nostalgia for a lost religious affiliation. The nebulous "community"
is a secular congregation whose god is guilt-tripping "gimme" politics.
Dear Camille,
I work in an office of economists that is overwhelmingly male-dominated
(much like the profession itself). However, there is one young lady in
the office who is very intelligent, very attractive and very aware of
being both! As such, she wears many outfits that are very
revealing/flattering to her figure, but are widely considered by most men
in the office to be inappropriate attire for a professional setting (short
black dresses, etc.). The rub here is that this young lady is a
Berkeley-educated feminist, and quite militant about it as well.
Most of the men in the office are married or in a relationship, and are
made quite uncomfortable by the rather brazen flaunting of her sexuality.
However, we are terrified of asking her to dress more demurely since we
fear she could construe it as comments of a sexual and even sexist nature,
and thus sue the pants off of us, rendering us emasculated as it were!
I have two questions: How do we broach this topic with her, and perhaps
more interestingly, why would a self-professed "radical feminist" enjoy
drawing such attention with obvious sexual overtones to herself from her
male colleagues?
Unsure in the University Dear Unsure:
First, I'd want to know where your university is located. Is the "Berkeley-educated feminist" importing a freer, more natural California style to a
still-traditional region of the country? It's hard for me to judge from your
letter whether she is a hip, vivacious fashion pioneer or a neurotic,
tasteless ditz who's been cock-teasing men since Daddy changed her diapers.
In general, I support a rethinking of the "professional" code of dress and
manner, which was formed by the sometimes puritanical sobriety of Northern
Europe, where the industrial revolution began. In the 1980s, Joan Collins in
"Dynasty" and Donna Mills in "Knots Landing" were highly influential in
embodying a sexier, more glamorous look for ambitious professional women.
Your young lady has been more directly produced by the Madonna revolution, but
if she is as "militant" in her feminist creed as you claim, she may just be
mentally confused from what was probably a lousy, PC-saturated Berkeley
education.
If she is genuinely committed to and competent in her work, I don't understand
why her dress should be an issue. Making people "uncomfortable" has been
intrinsic to every advance in fashion -- from women's skirts rising from ankle to knee in
the 1920s to women's structured brassieres flying out the window in the
1960s. In fundamentalist Islamic societies, after all, women must still
cover their arms! Lipstick, nail polish, slacks, even cigarettes were all
radical for women once.
If, however, your junior colleague is being deliberately, childishly
disruptive, then surely it is the task of the department chairman to have a
chat with her about professional standards and expectations. However, I do
think you need to seek a knowledgeable woman's first-hand perspective on what
is actually going on in your office. Gay guys are shrewd about this too -- dig
one up! He'll let you know if the new girl's a fabulous fox or a bumbling
bimbette.
Dear Mistress of the Illumined Dark:
This may be too academic for your column, but I'm really unhappy about
the drubbing Jung's reputation has been taking lately via the poisonous
pens of Richard Nolle and his sympathetic reviewers. (I became a
"Jungian" in the late '60s at Berkeley, especially after reading your
favorite, Erich Neumann's "Origins and History of Consciousness.") The
response from the Jungian side has been rather lackluster. It needs to
get imperious and scathing. Could you find it in your heart to scathe
on their behalf? To get a little too up close and personal in that
special way you have?
P.O.'d in L.A. Dear P.O.'d:
Surely Jung hasn't suffered as much as Freud, whom armies of flea-bitten mice
have been nibbling to death. It's pathetic how an entire generation of
American students at the elite schools have been forcibly immersed in the
brackish brew of poststructuralism and postmodernism, while being
simultaneously turned away from major thinkers of the rank of Freud and Jung.
I love Freud, but he wasn't particularly good at art criticism. Here is where
his student, Jung, helped provide the missing link by exploring the West's
underground spiritualist traditions of Hermeticism, alchemy, astrology and
the occult and by intricately relating them to the great Asian religions.
Unfortunately, just as Freud was ill-served by his third-rate imitators, so
was Jung betrayed by his hordes of schmaltzy acolytes, who made Jungianism the
first postwar New Age cult.
All honor to the deeply learned Erich Neumann! -- greatest of the Jungians. I
enthusiastically recommend his book "The Great Mother" as well as "Origins
and History of Consciousness." But I consider Bill Moyers' pet guru, Joseph
Campbell, an unscholarly fraud, spawner of the unctuous Pollyanna school of
Jungian feminism that doesn't know the first thing about how to crack a book.
In the "Cancelled Preface" to "Sexual Personae" (printed in "Sex, Art, and
American Culture"), I speak of my desire to restore the daunting mythic
ferocity of Sir James George Frazer to the sanitized Jungianism of today.
Frazer's epic "The Golden Bough" influenced Freud and Jung and everyone else,
from T.S. Eliot to James Joyce.
We need to sweep those big bores, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Michel
Foucault, out of the curriculum and get Freud and Jung heavily back into it.
The Jungians themselves have been too complacent in allowing soggy claptrap to
take over their movement and besmirch it in the public eye. Certainly, just
as you suggest, a courageous Jungian has got to get out of the dugout, step up
to the plate and hit an "imperious" ball or two out of the park!
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