Sontag
was a human rights activist concerned with issues in
America and abroad, and she wasn't afraid to use her writing as
a platform to campaign against everything from the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. This often led
to controversy, as demonstrated by the backlash following her
The New Yorker essay shortly after the September 11,
2001 attacks on New York, which stated "In the matter of
courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the
perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."
She found the deluge of death threats and public ridicule following
the essay's publication equally frustrating, saying, "I find
that prevalence of group-think absolutely extraordinary. It's
very depressing to see how scared people are to say anything except
to read from this script."
She
continued to speak out up until her death, as recently as last
May criticizing the Bush administration for committing the country
"to a new, pseudo-religious doctrine of war, endless war--for
'the war on terror' is nothing less than that" in an essay
in The Guardian.
But
she was relentlessly critical of American culture in general,
as well, noting in the same essay that "America has become
a country in which the fantasies and the practice of violence
are, increasingly, seen as good entertainment, fun."
Some
in the lesbian community have lobbed their own criticism
at Sontag. Sontag teamed up with Leibovitz in 2001 to create Women,
a photographic celebration of women from all walks of life,
both famous and unknown, which was a museum show and later, a
coffee-table book. Noticeably lacking in the photos was any trace
of lesbian subtext. "If this show is partly meant to advertise
the empowerment of women," wrote Rebecca Brown on October
17, 2001 in The
Stranger, "the absence of lesbians is a cowardly
irony."
Even
the public acknowledgement of her sexuality was controversial,
coming as it did on the eve of the publication of an unauthorized
biography Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon in 2000,
which discussed her numerous lesbian love affairs. Sontag maintained
in an essay in the New Yorker that she had always been
out--that her sexuality had always been an "open secret"--but
many disagree. Neither Sontag's official website nor the numerous
newspaper obituaries published this week make reference to her
relationships with women.
In
a 2000 interview with The
Guardian, Sontag said that in the course of her life,
she has been in love with "five women, four men." The
article goes on to say that Sontag is "quite open about her
bisexuality now":
It's simple, she says. "As I've become less attractive to
men, so I've found myself more with women. It's what happens.
Ask any woman my age. More women come on to you than men. And
women are fantastic. Around 40, women blossom. Women are a work-in-progress.
Men burn out." She doesn't have a lover now, she lives alone.
The rumours about her and the photographer Annie Leibovitz are,
she says, without foundation. They are close friends.
While
the controversy she caused will likely rage on even after
her death, one thing on which Sontag's critics and fans agree
is that she has had an important and singular impact on American
social thought. In an article about her death on December 28,
2004, The New York Times described Sontag as "one
of the few intellectuals with whom Americans have ever been on
a first-name basis," and references to Sontag as one of America's
"leading intellectuals" appear in most news outlet's
report of her death. Even People magazine called her
"one of America's most lucid thinkers as well as a strong
social activist."
Even
if they did not always agree with her opinions, most readers have
appreciated Sontag's willingness to engage in the debate. She
will be missed by many.
