Susan Sontag
Times obit here.
Update, 12/29: The Times evidently doesn’t want a re-run of the Derrida debacle couple months ago and pulled the hack job they had on the website last night (okay, it wasn’t as bad as the Derrida obit — hey, they even called Danto in, like, real time!) and put this one up. (Warning: these links are usually dead after a few days. Free registration required.)
Update 2, 12/29: Sorry, been shooting from the hip. They didn’t pull last night’s obit, and McGrath’s piece is not an obit. Otherwise, my story was accurate.
Update 3, 1/11: I’ve been meaning to write about Sontag’s famous piece in the New Yorker right after 9/11, which I found awful — but somehow I don’t know what to say beyond that visceral reaction. This is what’s been bothering me (and many others, obviously):
Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.
What I found most disingenuous were those scare quotes.
Susan Sontag by herself:
U Sarajevo sam otišla zato što mi je to putovanje predložio moj sin, koji je – kao novinar – izvještavao iz rata. Kad sam tamo bila prvi put, u travnju 1993., rekla sam ljudima kako bih se rado vratila i radila nešto u tom gradu pod opsadom. Kad su me pitali što znam raditi rekla sam: mogu tipkati, znam osnovne bolničarske poslove, mogu podučavati engleski, znam snimati filmove i režirati predstave. “Oh”, rekli su mi, “režirajte predstavu, ovdje ima toliko glumaca bez posla.” Godota sam izabrala u dogovoru s kazališnom zajednicom u Sarajevu. Bit je u tome da je ta predstava u Sarajevu bila posljedica toga što su me to, kad sam već bila u tom gradu, zamolile neke Sarajlije od kojih sam tražila da mi kažu kako bih, na neki skroman način, mogla biti od koristi. Poštovanje stvarnosti To nije imalo baš nikakve veze s «povlasticom intelektualaca»! Moj posjet nije imao namjeru biti politička intervencija. Ako sam imala ikakav impuls, on je svakako prije bio moralni nego politički. Bila bih zadovoljna i da su mi dali da pomažem ljudima da sjednu u invalidska kolica. Obvezala sam se obaviti posao, riskirajući svoj život, u situaciji iznimne neudobnosti i smrtne opasnosti. Bilo je bombardiranja, meci su mi letjeli oko glave… Nije bilo hrane, struje, tekuće vode, nije bilo pošte ni telefona – dan za danom, tjedan za tjednom, mjesec za mjesecom. To nije «simboličko». To je stvarno. A ljudi misle da sam tamo malo navratila i režirala predstavu. Gledajte, u Sarajevo sam otišla u travnju 1993. i ostala u njemu više-manje do kraja 1995. To su dvije i pol godine. A režiranje predstave trajalo je dva mjeseca
Comment by Quod — December 29, 2004 @ 10:47 pm