Caught between morality and art: Susan Sontag on metaphors of illness

There remains something pertinent and gripping about Susan Sontag’s critique of illness metaphors and her broader effort to work toward a more humane and dignified view of suffering. Yet her call to liberate culture – and in particular art – from metaphor can seem perplexing. Not only does such liberation appear difficult to achieve within a medium like art, which seems inescapably figurative, but Sontag expressly highlights the value of metaphors, regarding their estranging effect not as a risk but as something from which societies might learn. Nor does Sontag express unqualified confidence in how the dispassionate ethos of modern medicine might correct a metaphor-laden discourse, approaching its scientized culture instead with a degree of skepticism. In exposing these tensions, I aim to show that Sontag is not naively seeking to free us from metaphor. Rather, she invites us to ask how figurative expression might offer something of value to public life. Her critique of metaphor leads us toward the further question of art’s role in society – an issue that has faded somewhat from contemporary political thinking.