On Susan Sontag's "New Sensibility" Aesthetic

Susan Sontag is a famous contemporary American writer and art critic,and is known as "the conscience of the American public".She is knowledgeable,sensitive and insightful in literature and art.Her critical theory involves many fields such as literature,art and culture,and is full of insight and philosophical thinking.Among them,her "new sensibility" aesthetics is a crystallization of her thoughts,which has strong enlightening and theoretical significance in this era of rational expansion and lack of perceptual vitality.It not only helps to awaken people’s dull feelings and sensibility,but also provides people with a new way to look at art.Therefore,expounding the aesthetics of "new sensibility" is a breakthrough point for us to fully understand his thought.This paper studies Sontag’s "new sensibility" aesthetics from multiple levels,and the overall structure can be roughly divided into five parts.The first part of the article mainly discusses the theoretical origin of "new sensibility",clarifies the causal relationship between "new sensibility" and art imitation theory and art extinction theory,and understands its theoretical background.The second part of the article mainly clarifies the specific meaning and concept of "new sensibility",and tries to accurately reflect the meaning of "new sensibility" in Sontag’s works by combining the related knowledge of etymology.After clarifying the connotation of "new sensibility",this paper further summarizes the four characteristics of "new sensibility" :emphasizing form over content,emphasizing feeling over morality,pluralism and inclusiveness,skepticism and flexibility.It should be noted that most of these characteristics are aimed at art,and the field of art has always been a core field for understanding "new sensibility".In order to further understand these characteristics of "new sensibility",this paper also expounds "Camp" as an aesthetic model of "new sensibility",and further understands "new sensibility" by analyzing the internal identity of "Camp" and "new sensibility".The third part of the article focuses on the contradiction between "interpretation" and "new sensibility",highlighting the disadvantages of "interpretation" in destroying sensibility and the interference of interpretation in artistic independence,and reflecting the proposition of "new sensibility" through the contradictory relationship between them.On this basis,this paper also discusses the concrete measures of Sontag’s "opposition to interpretation" and feels the coordination between these measures and the characteristics of "new sensibility" The fourth part of the article mainly discusses how Sontag’s "new sensibility" is embodied in her artistic practice,especially in her literary writing,photography criticism and novel creation,from which she can see the unity of her thought and practice.At the end of the article,the author traces back to the origin of the thought of "new sensibility",discusses Sontag’s revision and inheritance of previous thoughts,and at the same time,tries to reflect on the theory of "new sensibility",thinking that it is decentralized,subjective and contradictory.