Susan Sontag (Schriftstellerin)

Styles of Radical Will

Laurence Favre

That seriousness consists in not regarding art (or philosophy practiced as an art form: Witt. genstein) as something whose seriousness lasts forever, an "end," a permanent vehicle for spiritual ambition. The truly serious attitude is one that regards art as a "means thing that can perhaps be achieved only by abandoning art; judged more impatiently, art is a false way or (the word of the Dada artist Jacques Vaché) a stupidity.

Silence is the artist's ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, con- sumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.

The art of our time is noisy with appeals for silence. A coquettish, even cheerful nihilism.

One recognizes the imperative of silence, but goes on speaking anyway. Discovering that one has nothing to say, one seeks a way to say that.

The unquenchable American moralism and the American faith in violence are not just twin symptoms of some character neurosis taking the form of a protracted adolescence, which presages an eventual maturity. They constitute a full-grown, firmly installed national psychosis, founded, as are all psychoses, on the efficacious denial of reality. So far it’s worked. 

Susan Sontag

A powerful collection of essays reveals the author's interpretation of aesthetics and morality in film, literature, and politics, and provides a provocative study on pornography. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Styles of Radical Will

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