Sontag's Radical Will

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Archive on 4: Sontag's Radical Will

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Sontag's Radical Will

Novelist Deborah Levy assesses the life and work of American writer Susan Sontag.

Novelist Deborah Levy assesses the life and work of Susan Sontag, the American writer and intellectual whose ideas shaped how we think today.

Susan Sontag - writer, public intellectual and “empress of American culture” - may have died fifteen years ago, but she continues to shape how we think today, on subjects as diverse as photography, illness, sexuality, and violence.  

 Novelist, poet, and playwright Deborah Levy charts Sontag’s role as a lucid chronicler of major cultural moments, from the sexual revolution of the 1960s to the AIDS crisis and the Bosnian war.   

 Sontag broke with traditional post-war criticism in America, articulating how the boundaries between high culture and popular culture were crumbling. She advocated a sensual approach to seeing and experiencing art, arguing that “interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.” She was concerned with what it means to make images out of reality and to pay attention to the suffering of others.   

 A fearless, outspoken thinker, Sontag had a complex relationship with her own gender and sexuality. She was determined to hone a public persona that ensured people took her seriously. Levy examines her views on feminism and considers her attitudes in light of contemporary notions of identity politics and self-expression.    

Alongside biographer Benjamin Moser, writer and friend Sigrid Nunez, American essayist Leslie Jamison, and British writer Lisa Appignanesi, Deborah Levy considers Sontag’s major works - including Against Interpretation, On Photography, and Illness as Metaphor - in the context of our current era, arguing that her rigorous voice and daring imagination are ever vital. 

Produced by Meara Sharma
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