I can’t think of anywhere she sets out the sort of argument that would be directly relevant here, but I’ll throw some useful quotes in. The claim is central to her whole approach in SP, which she states in the opening paragraph of the preface:Sexual Personae seeks to demonstrate the unity and continuity of western culture—something that has inspired little belief since the period before World War I. The book accepts the canonical western tradition and rejects the modernist idea that culture has collapsed into meaningless fragments. I argue that Judeo-Christianity never did defeat paganism, which still flourishes in art, eroticism, astrology, and pop culture. This is built on throughout the book, e.g.: “The second volume [never appeared!] will show how movies, television, sports, and rock music embody all the pagan themes of classical antiquity.” I think this is where you’d argue that these phenomena were worthless fakes of paganism, but they didn’t have to be if they’d been backed by the culture creators embracing a meaningful pagan approach, rather than retreating into crypto-Christian superstition. A Paglian pagan movement could have arisen. I know, cos it flourishes quite nicely round these parts. Another example: “Every woman’s body contains a cell of archaic night, where all knowing must stop. This is the profound meaning behind striptease, a sacred dance of pagan origins which, like prostitution, Christianity has never been able to stamp out.” And some more relevant examples (remembering it was published in 1990): G. Wilson Knight remarks, “Christianity came originally as a tearing down of taboos in the name of a sacred humanity; but the Church it gave rise to has never yet succeeded in Christianizing the pagan evil magic of sex.”7 Historiography’s most glaring error has been its assertion that Judeo-Christianity defeated paganism. Paganism has survived in the thousand forms of sex, art, and now the modern media. Christianity has made adjustment after adjustment, ingeniously absorbing its opposition (as during the Italian Renaissance) and diluting its dogma to change with changing times. But a critical point has been reached. With the rebirth of the gods in the massive idolatries of popular culture, with the eruption of sex and violence into every corner of the ubiquitous mass media, Judeo-Christianity is facing its most serious challenge since Europe’s confrontation with Islam in the Middle Ages. The latent paganism of western culture has burst forth again in all its daemonic vitality. Although maybe something like the following is close to what you’re saying: Paganism is eye-intense. It is based on cultic exhibitionism, in which sex and sadomasochism are joined. The ancient chthonian mysteries have never disappeared from the Italian church. Waxed saints’ corpses under glass. Tattered arm bones in gold reliquaries. Half-nude St. Sebastian pierced by arrows. St. Lucy holding her eyeballs out on a platter. Blood, torture, ecstasy, and tears. Its lurid sensationalism makes Italian Catholicism the emotionally most complete cosmology in religious history. Italy added pagan sex and violence to the ascetic Palestinian creed. An explicit example of paganism’s return: The residual paganism of western culture bursts out full flower in modern show business... Judy Garland inspired mob hysteria among male homosexuals. Media reports speak of uncanny shrieking, mass assaults on the stage, blinding showers of bouquets. These were orgiastic eunuch rites at the shrine of the goddess. Photos show posturing men making sensational entrances in Garland’s glittery costume, just like transvestite devotees of the ancient Great Mother. I’ve no idea how such a ramshackle, unconscious resurgence of paganism could have been turned into something coherent and recognised and signed-up-to (and maybe it didn’t need to), but surely it’s not unreasonable to think it could have. In Paglia’s essay No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality – “What I propose is an argument based on another Western tradition, the Greco-Roman or pagan, which was equal to the Judeo-Christian in the formation of our culture”... -- she sets out some ground rules. It’s an essay where pederasty is returned to the fold (cautiously). A paganism that exists within a Christian superstructure—it seems to me that’s part of the very thing that is terminally exhausted. Sections of the alt-right are quite excited about reviving Christianity, but that’s not looking a very promising phenomenon. If they ever got up a serious head of steam, a severe sex-phobic morality would be its first order of business. Their pedo-hatred makes the Left’s power-games look naïve. Any revitalised Christianity would have to re-conquer wicked paganism—pagan nature—the original and eternal foe. It was curious to see, over the course of Paglia’s public career, that she got a far better hearing from conservatives and Christians than from the Left. These days, if her quotes turn up at places like Twitter, there’s always trolls waiting to post her more provocative pro-boylove statements, inviting much shocked disavowal of her. I suspect they’re Rightists, wanting to gate-keep the movement, but I can’t be sure – the Left certainly loathed her back in the day.  |