Choose Truth Over Justice

Susan Sontag was the last pop star of US literature, says Annarosa Buttarelli. For nearly fifty years she established the terms of the cultural discourse, moving freely between high and popular culture. Born in New York, she studied in at Berkeley, Chicago and Harvard, but engaged deeply with European cultural tradition and was buried in Paris. Her writing covered a wide range of subjects, from photography to politics, never fixating on a single field of study. 

Livia Ravera reads her homage to Sontag. She has an important memory involving Sontag. The last book she gifted her dying sister was Illness as Metaphor, in which Sontag disavows society's imagery of disease, often endowed with a moral subtext. Sontag never states she has survived two mortal illnesses. Yet she lets her readers catch a glimpse of her personal life throughout many of her texts. In Under the Sign of Saturn, for example, she portrays the great melancholy of literature, its frenzy and transgression. But through these portraits Sontag paints herself, subtly revealing her own inner world. 

Maria Nadotti intervention is less emotional, and highlights the urgency of Sontag's work even in contemporary times. Her voice stroke as lightning in the stagnant waters of academia. Confronting any topic, she demanded dialogue and critical exchanges rather than judgement. Judgement implies justice, and lies can be uttered in its pursuit. Sontag was always on a quest for truth. For example, right after 9/11 the dominant narrative was that terrorists had acted cowardly. Sontag rejected this characterisation: rather than simplifying the narrative of that disaster, she compelled Americans to ask themselves why they had been attacked. 

Her quest for truth took her to besieged Sarajevo, where she directed Waiting for Godot casting actors from the National Theatre. Today, the square in front of the theatre is dedicated to her. But she also reached a place that is prevalent in today's public and political discourse: Israel. When she won the Jersusalem Prize in 2001, her speech centered on the idea of the writer as incarnating an ideal of plurality, doubt, contradiction and shades. Following that event, she will explicitly criticize Israel’s crimes against Palestine. 

Sontag is still a thought-provoking intellectual, who challenged repression and conformity, celebrating complexity, and reminding us the need for courage and honesty in difficult times.