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Writers

Susan Sontag

Politics Health

Disease as Political Metaphor

Punitive notions of disease have a long history, and such notions are particularly active with cancer. There is the “fight” or “crusade” against cancer; cancer is the “killer” disease; people who have cancer are “cancer victims.” Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable.

Susan Sontag New York Review of Books Feb 1978 Permalink

Arts History Movies & TV

Fascinating Fascism

On a book of photographs shot by Leni Riefenstahl in the 1950s and 1960s depicting an African tribe.

Susan Sontag New York Review of Books Feb 1975 35min Permalink

Arts

Notes On "Camp"

“Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric—something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.”

Susan Sontag Partisan Review Dec 1964 25min Permalink