Ahmed is good, but does that take away from Paglia?
She is a very different writer, whose speculative flights of fancy have often been used to attack her by those who, indulging the same in a Nietzsche or a Foucault, suddenly become very pompous about sourcing and such when it comes to Paglia.
Paglia often goes further in her arguments than she can justify, and her sources are eclectic rather than systematic, but there is room for that kind of writing. It seems a shame to me that she must be damned either as the representative of the evil empire who must be demolished on the one hand, or a mere amateur who must be discounted on the other. It bespeaks of a basic discomfort with someone who is prepared to think in unconventional ways.
The basic intuition in the article goes a lot further than most, more showily erudite writers would. She says that archaeology is not reducible to the prejudices of its practitioners - a valuable lesson. And that study of it is a better education in multiculturalism than the kind of theorising that makes very sophisticated arguments to support students' philistinism, the methodological equivalent of 'just don't go there'.
('Awfully amateurish' - I don't think so. Strictly speaking it is we, the unpaid posters who are the amateurs, and she, the (here) paid journalist that is the professional.) -- Jim heartfield