WIST Quotations

Sontag, Susan -- “Notes on ‘Camp,'” Note 54 (1964)

Dave — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:46:30 +0000

The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
“Notes on ‘Camp,'” Note 54 (1964)

Sontag, Susan -- “Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

Dave — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:56:00 +0000

People do these things to other people. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, do them when they have permission. When they are told or made to feel that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be mistreated, humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
“Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times (23 May 2004)

On the photos of Iraqi prisoners tortured by Americans in Abu Ghraib.

Sontag, Susan -- “Why Are We in Kosovo?”, New York Times (2 May 1999)

Dave — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:48:37 +0000

Stop the War and Stop the Genocide, read the banners being waved in the demonstrations in Rome and here in Bari. For Peace. Against War. Who is not? But how can you stop those bent on genocide without making war?

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
“Why Are We in Kosovo?”, New York Times (2 May 1999)

Sontag, Susan -- AIDS and Its Metaphors, ch. 4 (1989)

Dave — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:34:28 +0000

It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
AIDS and Its Metaphors, ch. 4 (1989)

Sontag, Susan -- Illness As Metaphor, ch. 7 (1978)

Dave — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 21:23:28 +0000

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else ) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
Illness As Metaphor, ch. 7 (1978)
(Source)

Sontag, Susan -- On Photography, “Melancholy Objects” (1977).

Dave — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:41:49 +0000

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism — victimless collecting, as it were … in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
On Photography, “Melancholy Objects” (1977).

Sontag, Susan -- On Photography, ch. 2 (1977)

Dave — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:07:03 +0000

To photograph is to confer importance.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
On Photography, ch. 2 (1977)

Sontag, Susan -- Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Dave — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:45:54 +0000

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don’t become inured to what they are shown — if that’s the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Sontag, Susan -- Interview, “The ‘Traitor’ Fires Back” (by David Talbot), Salon (16 Oct 2001)

Dave — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:16:53 +0000

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don’t consider it a moral virtue.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
Interview, “The ‘Traitor’ Fires Back” (by David Talbot), Salon (16 Oct 2001)

Sontag, Susan -- Speech receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt (12 Oct 2003)

Dave — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:32:42 +0000

All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric. The enemy is invariably a threat to “our way of life,” an infidel, a desecrator, a polluter, a defiler of higher or better values. The current war against the very real threat posed by militant Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly clear example.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
Speech receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt (12 Oct 2003)

Full text.

Sontag, Susan -- Speech receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt (12 Oct 2003)

Dave — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:45:53 +0000

The United States is a generically religious society. That is, in the United States it’s not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
Speech receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt (12 Oct 2003)

Full text.