Susan Sontag presents the true significance of disease as it has affected cultures throughout the centuries.
Reveals that the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of the patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, this study shows cancer for what it is.
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Summary
Susan Sontag presents the true significance of disease as it has affected cultures throughout the centuries.
Reveals that the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of the patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, this study shows cancer for what it is.
Description
In these groundbreaking studies, Sontag strips away the myths that surround the two most stigmatized diseases of our timeSontag wrote Illness as Metaphor in 1978, while suffering from breast cancer herself. In her study she reveals that the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of the patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is - a disease; not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment, and highly curable, if good treatment is found early enough. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote Aids and Its Metaphors, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.
Critic Reviews
"Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor "was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . . "AIDS and Its Metaphors "extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear."--Michael Ignatieff, "The New Republic"
"Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . . "AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear."--Michael Ignatieff, "The New Republic
About the Author
Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include On Photography, Regarding the Pain of Others and At the Same Time. She was also the author of four novels, including The Volcano Lover and In America, as well as a collection of stories and several plays. She was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, and received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.
Back Cover
'One of the most liberating books of our time' Newsweek When diagnosed with breast cancer Susan Sontag discovered the extent to which we have developed a mythology to cope with disease, which can often distort the truth about illness and isolate the patient. In Illness as Metaphor she stripped away the myths and presented the true significance of disease as it has affected cultures throughout the centuries. AIDS and Its Metaphors extended her critique to examine the metaphors surrounding AIDS and to expose the truth, free of guilt, shame and fear. 'Whatever Sontag writes is passionate ... hers is the satirist's pity for our ignorance and folly' Jonathan Keates, Observer 'An exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear' Michael Ignatieff, New Republic
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