In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. – Susan Sontag
“Reports of the death of reality – like the death of reason, the death of the intellectual, the death of serious literature – seem to have been accepted without much reflection by many who are attempting to understand what feels wrong, or empty, or idiotically triumphant in contemporary politics and culture.” – Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag (1933–2004)
Siekte was altyd daar:
jou vader sterf aan tuberkulose
en hierna sou jy polifonies
oor siekte-in-al-sy-gedaantes skryf:
siekte as metafoor,
oorlog as kanker,
jou moeder se longkanker;
jy gediagnoseer met leukemie.
I, etcetera sou mens kon skryf
oor jou onvermoeide analise
van ander se pyn of dalk
’n soort Death Kit?
Dramatiese ironie toe jy uitgestal
word deur Annie Leibovitz,
’n vulkaniese geliefde, in foto’s
wat jou siekte uitblaker.
Die private word openbaar
soos afdrukke wat ’n siel steel.
Jou lewensloop bewys:
besinning spruit uit ónmag.
© Joan Hambidge
I
Ek lees Susan Sontag al sedert 1980. Al haar boeke staan op ‘n rak in my kombuis. Van die boeke geteken deur haar tydens ‘n ontmoeting aan die Universiteit van Kaapstad. 17 Maart 2004.
So is dit indertyd geadverteer op UCT se webblad:
Outspoken: Susan Sontag will speak in the Jameson Hall at 18h00 on Wednesday, March 17.
Susan Sontag – writer, critic, filmmaker, stage director, human rights activist, icon and provocateur – speaks at UCT this week.
Although not one to shy away from controversy and not averse to panning, even post 9/11, either her country’s foreign policies or its commander-in-chief, Sontag remains one of the US’ most celebrated literary figures. Her writing, without fail, sparks as much debate as it elicits hosannas, and has graced some of America’s leading publications.
Her 1987 anthologised story The Way We Live Now was included in both The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties and The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Sontag’s reputation at home is matched by her fame and notoriety outside of her native country. Her books have been translated into 32 languages, while her plays have been performed widely, from Mexico to Korea.
She was made an honorary citizen of Sarajevo after she staged an adaptation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the besieged city in 1993. From 1987 to 1989, she was president of the American Centre of PEN, the international writers’ organisation dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature.
In addition, Sontag has also won a string of international awards, including the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the 2001 Jerusalem Prize.
Regarding the Pain of Others, her latest book – seen by some as a follow-up to her canonical 1977 treatise, On Photography – has been described as a “profound rethinking of the intersection of ‘news’ art, and understanding in the contemporary depiction of war and disaster”.
And she has an equally admiring fan base in South Africa where, this week, she addresses a gathering at Wits University, before making her way to Cape Town and UCT to deliver a lecture here.
She is “phenomenally brilliant and a mature essayist”, wrote UCT’s Professor Joan Hambidge in Die Burger, shortly after news broke that the writer would be stopping over in South Africa. “Sontag has, second only to Roland Barthes, probably had the most formative influence on my thinking as an intellectual,” she eulogised.
Another UCT scholar to credit Sontag with shaping her life and work is Associate Professor Lesley Marx who, through a colleague at Wits and a casual remark, initiated Sontag’s visit to UCT.
“She has been one of my ‘culture heroes’ since I was 18,” Marx said.
Commenting on some of Sontag’s writing, Marx added: “Sontag’s early (1965) essay, Against Interpretation, concludes, ‘In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art’. “The ability to conclude with a sentence so beautifully balanced, so suggestive and so appropriately climactic to the force of her argument against interpretation is just one aspect of Sontag’s mix of provocation and enchantment.
“Earlier in the same essay, Sontag tells us: ‘Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.’ Or, eight years later, in her seminal book on photography: ‘To collect photographs is to collect the world’, and again, the opening sentence of her powerful meditation on illness: “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship’.
“These are not merely clever, elegant turns of phrase,” noted Marx, “but distillations of a passionate mind and a fierce intelligence whose exploration and articulation of the multiple forms of expression and behaviour during the twentieth century and beyond have made Sontag one of the most enduring and always enthralling of thinkers.”
https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2004-03-15-straight-shooting-sontag-at-uct
Ek het die voorreg gehad om nie alleen haar lesing by te woon nie, maar ook saam ‘n besoek te onderneem na Khayelitsha. En te eet by die rektor aan’t huise.
Gesellig, dog afstandelik – sy was ‘n New Yorker – op hierdie dagbesoek. Sy het van haar boeke geteken: agterin, nie voor by die kolofon nie.
Die volgende essays staan op Litnet:
“Desperately Seeking Susan Sontag: ’n Essay-verhaal” en “Op soek na oorspronklikheid
II
Hoe skryf ‘n mens ‘n portret oor iemand wat jy bewonder as intellektueel én mens?
Sou die portret anders daar uitgesien het indien ek haar nooit ontmoet het nie? Wat laat die digter uit? Wat behou jy?
Sy het beweer dat foto’s elegies en nostalgies is. Ook dat foto’s mense onverwags betrap wanneer hulle afgeneem word in ‘n private ruimte. Elizabeth Hardwick se versameling van haar belangrikste essays in 1982, deur Penguin uitgewers, bly ‘n rigtinggewer.
Oor haar voormalige vriendin Annie Leibovitz se grensoorskrydende uitstalling van haar in haar siekte en aftakeling het my diep onthuts.
Mary Ann Linn skryf uitgebreid en insigryk hieroor.
Teenoor David Rieff, Sontag se seun se siening ““carnival images of celebrity death” besluit sy ten slotte dat die foto’s eerder haar dood transendeer:
The content of the images also suggest that Leibovitz’s photographs go beyond voyeurism. By creating the photograph in parts, and later piecing it back together again in curved overlaps, Leibovitz attempts to humanize the photography experience as it reflects the reconstruction of Sontag’s unrecognizable, and nearly withered features of her corpse into the concept of Sontag as an individual, as seen through Leibovitz’s eyes. This harks back to the photograph of Sontag at Hedges Lane. By humanizing the dead Sontag, she inevitably immortalizes Sontag into the image of Sontag alive, breathing and lying on a couch. It is the image of Sontag that she chooses to retain. The overlapping of the photograph also delineates itself, into a second set hidden underneath the dominant photograph, suggesting a personal experience of Sontag only known to Leibovitz, purposefully and metaphorically, kept away from the public eye. Perhaps in large part also, while this photograph may have garnered greater celebrity attention for Leibovitz, the publication and capturing could have acted as a form of release for Leibovitz, as a sharing of her life which was dominated by the presence of Sontag. This is further reinforced by the “breathing space” given to Sontag, whereby the photograph does not consist only of her image, but has also taken into account the purview of her surroundings, which gives context and the sense of Sontag resting peacefully.
Hence, taking into account the larger polemics of death photography, and its ethics, Leibovitz successfully transforms the corpse from the demeaned state it resides in, into a dignified process of mourning through photography. The modern day tradition of preserving the sanctity of death is sustained as such, through the medium of photography which is all at once, a public and private affair that is able to distance and compel the audience. Rather than mere documentation or voyeurism, it finds its place in the exhibition and marks a somber moment in the story, where death seems to be pervasive in Leibovitz’s life. For her, this is an act of remembrance and a means of letting go. Hence, rather than carnival, the composure of Sontag in the photograph suggests only a mere slumber – the audience is invited not to gawk at her death, but rather, meditate upon this once-intimidating force of Sontag now laid to peaceful rest.
https://tembusu3.nus.edu.sg/treehouse/2015/04/mortality-in-photography-examining-the-death-of-susan-sontag/ Besoek 2 September 2024
‘n Gedig is eweneens ‘n portret. Dalk minder betredend as ‘n foto.
‘n Portret verraai eweneens iets van die fotograaf of digter se ingesteldheid jeens die onderhawige persoon.
Susan Sontag
’n portretvers
Duet vir kannibale roep jy ‘n drama,
dalk wetend hoe jou lewe en aftakeling,
uitgestal sou word met siekte slopend,
as simbool vir ‘n kliekbehepte groupie?
‘n Foto, leer jy ons, skep sy eie grammatika,
ook bewussyn: ‘n foto van jou op ‘n geroeste skip
windverwaaid en blootgestel onder Saturnus:
oor die estetika van stilte; ek-ensovoorts.
Snelskrif van hoe leukemie jou liggaam betree,
wyl jy immer besig was met ander se lewenslot.
Jy bly ‘n baken in alle tye van ongeregtigheid;
ón-dubbelsinnig oor 9/11 en die VSA se betredings.
Te midde van oorloë en aanvalle steeds durend,
bly ek getrou aan jou uitsonderlike skoonskrif:
”Toujours fidèle, toujours”, soos Roland Barthes,
jou lof as mens én skrywer besing indertyd.
Die gesprek tussen haar en Roland Barthes sal eweneens beskryf word: On Photography en Camera lucida.
En hoe sy ingespan word as ‘n kommentator, saam met Saul Bellow in Woody Allen se film in 1983 Zelig oor ‘n fiktiewe figuur wat verskillende identiteite kan aanneem in ‘n mockumentary.
Joan Hambidge
Kaapstad
September 2024