Susan Sontag (1933–2004)

Ante el dolor de los demás
Susan Sontag
Publicado: 2003 | 96 páginas
Ensayo Arte Ciencias sociales Comunicación Psicología

Las imágenes de la violencia y la guerra se han convertido, a través de la pequeña pantalla, en lugares comunes. Susan Sontag nos descubre las implicaciones y los peligros que esto tiene para la sociedad contemporánea. Ya no podemos ser inocentes, somos testigos. Y este planteamiento desemboca en cuestiones fundamentales: la manera en que las imágenes pueden generar rebeldía, fomentar la agresividad o derivar en apatía; la naturaleza de la guerra; los límites de la compasión y la solidaridad; y finalmente, la responsabilidad individual. Para ilustrar sus teorías, la autora evoca una impresionante historia de la representación del dolor: de Goya a los campos de concentración nazis, la guerra civil española, Sierra Leona, Ruanda, Israel y Palestina, y Nueva York el 11 de septiembre de 2001. Susan Sontag retoma aquí uno de sus temas favoritos: la fotografía, ese arte contemporáneo que forma parte fundamental de nuestra manera del ver el mundo y que es pieza clave de las reflexiones de una de las intelectuales más lúcidas de hoy.… (plus d'informations)

From the perspective of someone who is an enthusiastic photographer, this book helped me to work through why I like to take pictures. Sontag discusses many of the purposes that photography has been identified with and used for, as a replacement for painting, for cataloguing the world around us, for attempting to replicate or copy the thing photographed.
She died before the real digital age of photography so many of her thoughts are only hints at the slightly strange reality that has unfolded, where billions of people now have an excellent camera in their pockets and can share their experiences and pictures instantly with each other. What would she have made of this I wonder? Photography is no longer attempting at being art for most people, it is simply
Sharing their lives with each other, frankly and unashamedly, even when often the things that are shared are not really worthy of attention.
Narcissism appears to be rife among younger people who pose and share images to each other and to the world as though to suggest that their value is related to their looks and not to their ideas. Sontag would have had a field day with Instagram, it’s a pity she isn’t here to see it.… (plus d'informations)

In 1876, the celebrated Polish actress Maryna Załężowska and a group of her Warsaw-intellectual friends set off to live on a Fourier-inspired commune in California. As so often happens with idealistic communities, it doesn’t quite work out as they had hoped, and Maryna finds herself going back on stage to create a new career for herself in America.

Sontag uses this historical-fiction framework to explore what it might have meant to be a famous woman, successful in a high-profile profession, in late-19th century Europe and America, as well as picking out some of the oddities of American life and thought from a European perspective, and vice-versa, and dissecting the ways that acting on stage intersect with real (family) life and relationships. But also about the way that migration creates opportunities — and pressures — for us to adopt new personas and names. We learn quite a lot about Victorian tastes in theatre, meet some interesting real-life figures from the period, and generally get an awful lot of information thrown at us.

Sontag also has a lot of fun playing around with a range of clever — and sometimes plain theatrical — narrative techniques, most notably in the opening chapter, where the far-from-omniscient narrator finds herself watching from the sidelines of a party taking place in an era and a place far outside her own experience, and trying to piece together who these characters might be and how they fit together. The closing chapter is another tour-de-force, a monologue, with stage directions, addressed to Maryna and delivered by her fellow-actor Edwin Booth (brother of…) as he slips in and out of the roles of himself and an assortment of Shakespearean protagonists.

A demanding read, but also quite a rewarding one, with its share of fun.… (plus d'informations)

Susan Sontag fue una de las pensadoras más formidables, originales e influyentes del siglo pasado. «Las ideas más interesantes son las herejías», sostenía. Y en efecto: sus escritos descartan lo trillado y se niegan a seguir las líneas partidistas.

De las mujeres ofrece siete ensayos y debates sobre una amplia gama de asuntos: los desafíos y humillaciones a las que se enfrentan las mujeres a medida que envejecen; la relación entre la liberación de la mujer y la lucha de clases; la belleza, que Sontag llama «esa pócima demasiado pesada de tantos consabidos opuestos»; el feminismo; el fascismo; y el cine. En conjunto, estos análisis, reacios a la fácil categorización, muestran no sólo su curiosidad implacable, su precisión histórica y su vigor político, sino la inimitable mente de Sontag en acción.… (plus d'informations)