Susan Sontag
Paperback | Pages: 117 pages Rating: 4.04 | 10517 Users | 693 Reviews
Declare Books Supposing Regarding the Pain of Others
| Original Title: | Regarding the Pain of Others |
| ISBN: | 0141012374 (ISBN13: 9780141012377) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Criticism (2003), Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form (2004) |
Explanation Concering Books Regarding the Pain of Others
Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in our culture today. How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newspapers) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty?In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001. In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag once again changes the way we think about the uses and meanings of images in our world, and offers an important reflection about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time.
Features an analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. This title alters our thinking about the uses and meanings of images, and about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.
List Of Books Regarding the Pain of Others
| Title | : | Regarding the Pain of Others |
| Author | : | Susan Sontag |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 117 pages |
| Published | : | August 26th 2004 by Penguin (first published January 7th 2003) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Philosophy. Writing. Essays. Art. Photography. History |
Rating Of Books Regarding the Pain of Others
Ratings: 4.04 From 10517 Users | 693 ReviewsJudgment Of Books Regarding the Pain of Others
A very interesting essay filled with thought-provoking remarks."To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude". A splendid analysis of suffering and pain as depicted by photography within our 'society of spectacle', written with Sontag's usual lucidity, and just as eye-opening as On Photography, published thirty years prior.
A brilliant expansion and revision of On Photography, Regarding the Pain of Others argues for approaching images of suffering only as invitations to consider the origins and impact of social inequality. Drawing attention to how photography is always both art and testimony, Sontag convincingly deconstructs the idea that a photo of pain by itself can reveal anything universal or self evident about oppression, historical or ongoing. The author then claims that, even if photos of suffering cant act
3.5 ⭐ Sontag engages in some interesting intellectual exercises here as she considers our relationship with images of human suffering. Her writing is dense and winding and flirts with academic jargonbut her mastery of language and rhetoric is more impressive than her actual points, which arent as novel or complex as they may seem. Good food for thought, for sure, but her argumentation left me wanting more.
I've been thinking along these lines for some time now. Probably we all have. A lot of these ideas are not new. But it's nice to see them explored, thought over despite having been thought over already. Sontag does not give us easy answers, because the act of looking at other people's pain is uncomfortable, and probably should always be uncomfortable. No amount of essaying about it should take that uncomfortableness away. However, while words will often cause us to think, photos of war and
A common criticism of Sontags writings (as noted in other reviews) is that theyre not discerning enough and frequently pose What? or How? instead of being decisive and affirming. I actually believe this is a strength utilized in her essays. Many of the ideas arent fully developed or entirely convincing, but that can be useful for reflection and stimulate discussion. I always find myself thinking about her points more than I do with other writers. Sontag mainly speaks about photography and asks a
One of the great theorists of the erotic, Georges Bataille, kept a photograph taken in China in 1910 of a prisoner undergoing the death of a hundred cuts on his desk, where he could look at it every day. (Since becoming legendary, it is reproduced in the last of Batailles books published during his lifetime, in 1961, Les Armes dEros (The Tears of Eros)). This photograph, Bataille wrote, had a decisive role in my life. I have never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain, at the same time
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