january 2005

Death of Susan Sontag announced
Here is one of her most famous Essays:

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town: Current



The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.


Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.


Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.


—Susan Sontag

The "traitor" fires back

Denounced as a fifth columnist by the right, Susan Sontag blasts America's cowlike media and scaremongering leaders -- and says she fears that another terror attack could turn the U.S. into a police state.

David Talbot :Did the storm of reaction to your brief essay in the New Yorker take you by surprise?

Absolutely. I mean, I am aware of what a radical point of view is; very occasionally I have espoused one. But I did not think for a moment my essay was radical or even particularly dissenting. It seemed very common sense. I have been amazed by the ferocity of how I've been attacked, and it goes on and on. One article in the New Republic, a magazine for which I have written, began: "What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Susan Sontag have in common?" I have to say my jaw dropped. Apparently we are all in favor of the dismantling of America. There's a kind of rhetorical overkill aimed at me that is astonishing. There has been a demonization which is ludicrous.

US author Susan Sontag dies at 71

SOME KEY WORKS 1964: Notes on Camp 1977: On Photography 1978: Illness as Metaphor 1992: The Volcano Lover 2000: In America 2003: Regarding the Pain of Others
BBC FileDec.29th2004

Author Susan Sontag, widely regarded as one of America's leading intellectuals, has died aged 71.

The writer, who had suffered from leukaemia, died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Calling herself an "obsessed moralist", Sontag was the author of 17 books and a lifelong human rights activist.

She wrote best-selling historical novel The Volcano Lover and in 2000 won the National Book Award for another historical novel, In America.

Popular essayist

Her greatest literary impact was as an essayist, however, with her 1964 study of homosexual aesthetics Notes on Camp establishing her as a major new writer.

The essay introduced the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applying it to everything from Swan Lake to feather boas.

In Against Interpretation, Sontag worried that critical analysis interfered with the "incantatory, magical" power of art.

"I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate," Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said.

"She is unique."

'Zealot of seriousness'

Sontag, who described herself as a "zealot of seriousness", was also a human rights activist and an outspoken opponent of US foreign policy.

She prompted controversy when she wrote that the September 2001 attacks on the US were not a "cowardly attack" on civilisation, but "an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions".

She also criticised US President George W Bush over the US-led war in Iraq.

In the 1990s Sontag travelled to the then Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war.

She visited the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo in 1993, where she staged a production of the play Waiting for Godot.