Research On Political Activities And Commentaries Of Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag is an American modern writer and critic bearing a high reputation. She worked on multi-lateral criteria, such as literature creation, literature and art criticism, philosophy and social criticism, etc. With unique taste and sharp wording, many of Sontag's works brought large circulation and aroused research interest from the academia and the public as well. The study on Susan Sontag in Europe and America began in the 1960s; the translation of Sontag's works began in the 1980s in China and the research on her has been quite lagged behind. Much of the research is the criticism on Sontag's literary and aesthetic writings.The paper holds that besides the literary and aesthetic values, Sontag's activities and commentaries when observing political affairs especially the wars embody the humanistic value of her and are an inseparable part of her intellectual critical thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to make systematic research on the historic details of Sontag's political activities and to study on her political commentaries.The paper is trying to make Sontag's political activities and commentaries the core of the research and focuses on her political positions and attitudes. The paper selectively studies on Sontag's political activities and commentaries in three phases. The paper mainly contains three parts. In first section of Chapter I, the paper first presents the turn from aesthetics to politics and interprets the political sense of the key concepts in Sontag's aesthetic ideas such as 'camp' and 'new sensibility'. And in section two, the paper makes critical analysis on the trip to Hanoi in 1968 and the essay 'Trip to Hanoi'. In that section, the paper holds that the trip to Hanoi is the beginning of Sontag's political activities and the essay 'Trip to Hanoi' embodies Sontag's understanding on politics and national affairs in that phase and it is the continuance of her aesthetic ideas. In Chapter II, the paper in section one discusses Sontag's activity of putting Waiting for Godot on stage in Sarajevo in 1992 and analyzes her essay 'Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo'. Her activity in Sarajevo embodies the conscience of a public intellectual when facing human sufferings; and reflects her elitist taste and value-judgment. In section two, the paper makes an analysis on Sontag's commentaries after 9.11 and on her last collection Regarding the Pain of Others published after the Iraqi war. Sontag's commentary after 9.11 shows her left position at that time and it is the timely intellectual query and reflection on American foreign policies. Regarding the Pain of Others is the continuance of On Photography. It is the meditation on the impact of images on human sensibility of sufferings. Chapterâ…¢is on the features and limitations of Sontag's political activities and commentaries.Susan Sontag is a representative of the western public intellectuals. Her political activities and commentaries reveal that Sontag, unlike the academic intellectuals, was an activist who voices for the disadvantaged all life long with solicitude for political affairs, sharp cultural sensibility and social conscience,...