|
Books by
Susan Sontag
In
America /
I, Etcetera
/
The
Volcano Lover /
Illness
and Metaphor /
Aids
and Metaphors /
Against
Interpretation and Other Essays
Styles
of Radical Will /
The
Story of the Eye
/
Under
the Sign of Saturn /
On
Photography /
Regarding the Pain of Others
Where
the Stress Falls /
Homo
Poeticus /
Conversations
with Susan Sontag /
Alice
in Bed /
A
Susan Sontag Reader
Death
Kit /
Duet
for Cannibals /
The
Benefactor
* * * *
*
Essays/Literary
Criticism
Regarding the Pain of Others
By Susan Sontag (1933 - )
Reviews
One of the distinguishing features of modern
life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding
(at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors
taking place throughout the world. Images of atrocities have
become, via the little screens of the television and the
computer, something of a commonplace. But are viewers inured --
or incited -- to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the
viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of
such images? What does it mean to care about the sufferings of
people in faraway zones of conflict?
Susan Sontag's now classic book
On
Photography defined the terms of this debate twenty-five
years ago. Her new book is a profound rethinking of the
intersection of "news" art, and understanding in the
contemporary depiction of war and disaster. She makes a fresh
appraisal of the arguments about how pictures can inspire
dissent, foster violence, or create apathy, evoking a long
history of the representation of the pain of others -- from
Goya's The Disasters of War to photographic documents of
the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, the
First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi death camps,
and contemporary images from Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda,
Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001.
This is also a book about how war itself is
waged (and understood) in our time, replete with vivid
historical examples and a variety of arguments advanced from
some unexpected literary sources. Plato, Leonardo da Vinci,
Edmund Burke, Wordsworth, Baudelaire, and Virginia Woolf all
figure in this passionate reflection on the modern understanding
of violence and atrocity. It includes as well a stinging attack
on the provincialism of media pundits who denigrate the reality
of war, and a political understanding of conflict, with glib
talk about a new, worldwide "society of spectacle:' just as
On Photography challenged how we understand the very
condition of being modern, Regarding the Pain of Others
will alter our thinking not only about the uses and meanings of
images, but about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and
the obligations of conscience.
* * * * *
Watching the evening news offers
constant evidence of atrocity--a daily commonplace in our
"society of spectacle." But are viewers inured -or
incited--to violence by the daily depiction of cruelty and horror?
Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the universal
availability of imagery intended to shock?
In her first full-scale investigation of the
role of imagery in our culture since her now-classic book On
Photography defined the terms of the debate twenty-five years
ago, Susan Sontag cuts through circular arguments about how
pictures can inspire dissent or foster violence as she takes a
fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The
Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War,
lynchings of blacks in the South, and Dachau and Auschwitz to
contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and
New York City on September 11, 2001.
As John Berger wrote when On Photography
was first published, "All future discussions or analysis of
the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies is
now bound to begin with her book." Sontag's new book, a
startling reappraisal of the intersection of
"information", "news," "art," and
politics in the contemporary depiction of war and disaster, will
be equally essential. It will forever alter our thinking about the
uses and meanings of images in our world. * * * * *
Twenty-six
years after the publication of her influential collection of
essays
On
Photography
(1977), Sontag (In
America) reconsiders
ideas that are "now fast approaching the status of
platitudes," especially the view that our capacity to respond
to images of war and atrocity is being dulled by "the
relentless diffusion of vulgar and appalling images" in our
rapaciously media-driven culture. Sontag opens by describing
Virginia Woolf's essay on the roots of war, "Three
Guineas," in which Woolf described a set of gruesome
photographs of mutilated bodies and buildings destroyed during the
Spanish Civil War. Woolf wondered if there truly can be a
"we" between man and woman in matters of war. Sontag
sets out to reopen and enlarge the question. "No `we' should
be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's
pain," she writes.
The "we" that Sontag has come to
be much more aware of in the decades since On Photography is the
world of the rich. She has come to doubt her youthful contention
that repeated exposure to images of suffering necessarily shrivels
sympathy, and she doubts even more the radical yet influential
spin that others put on this critique-that reality itself has
become a spectacle. "To speak of reality becoming a
spectacle... universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated
population living in the rich part of the world...." Sontag
reminds us that sincerity can turn a mere spectator into a
witness, and that it is the heart rather than fancy rhetoric that
can lead the mind to understanding.
--Publishers
Weekly
Sontag,
one of our most perceptive and valiant thinkers, offered a seminal
critique of camera-mediated images in On Photography. Now,
25 years later, photographs and video of the bloody consequences
of terrorism and war routinely fill the media, and Sontag offers a
fresh, meticulous, and deeply affecting dissection of the role
images of suffering play in our lives. Do photographs and
television footage of the injured and dead serve as "shock
therapy" or merely elicit a momentary shudder before they're
forgotten? Do images of systematic violence engender compassion
and antiwar sentiments or arouse hunger for revenge? Writing with
electrifying clarity and conciseness, Sontag traces the evolution
of the "iconography of suffering" from paintings by Goya,
to photographs of concentration camps, to the first live and
in-color war coverage to rage across television screens, that of
the Vietnam War, to images of the destruction of the World Trade
Center taken by amateurs and professionals alike. Sontag parses
the difference in our response to images of terrorism at home
versus abroad, and forthrightly addresses our pornographic
fascination with images of the wounded and dead. Ultimately,
Sontag, scrupulous in her reasoning and exhilarating in her
arguments, arrives at a paradox: although we're inundated more
than ever before by stark visual evidence of the "pain of
others," we've yet to increase our capacity to do something
about it.
--Donna
Seaman, ALA (from Booklist) |
