>Real queer intellectual revolutionaries -- Genet, Baldwin, Lorde,
>Burroughs, Locke -- exploded the universals from within and still
>remained connected to the matrix of existence.
Susan Sontag, in my view, was an essayist rather than a poet or novelist, though she did write fiction (in my opinion poorly, in Gary Indiana's opinion rather well). Fiction is a genre better suited for beginning with the particular and establishing a new universal. Sontag's approach to the personal and the political was more like Hannah Arendt's, Michel Foucault's, etc., and that's no surprise, as they were critics rather than poets or novelists.
>She was the Tommy Hilfiger of culture.
That's unkind. I'd say she was Fred Engels of post-structuralism. Her thought was seldom novel, but who says only novel thoughts are worthy of being written down and published? Unlike continental theorists and writers whose thoughts she introduced to Americans, she was a popularizer. In the process of translation from Europe to America, she often introduced an unfortunate tendency to moralize excessively, but she was aware of that problem, mocking her own "insufferable moralism."
>She crawled into the closet because if she came out she would be
>just another queer intellectual -- nothing special, not the Queen
>Bee she was
In my opinion, she made clear that she had been in love with both men and women, but when she did, many people said, "Oh, bisexual. So, you must be a lesbian with a foot in the closet."
As for the Queen Bee thing, it must be admitted that she was sexy and photogenic, alluring to both men and women, a kind of Marlene Dietrich (who, btw, also had affairs and relationships with both men and women) of intellectual life. If she had been plain or even ugly, she probably would never have enjoyed as much of limelight as she did, but that says more about how the media treat female intellectuals than about her (she came to her prominence when men were still not ashamed of calling her [or any other female intellectual] "the most intelligent woman in America"). Personally speaking, her photographs were one of the main reasons I picked up her books when I did, perhaps more important than the fact that she fancied many writers (Sade, Barthes, Benjamin, etc.) I fancied (and still do). :->
>One day she hails Leni Riefenstahl; when championing a Nazi is not
>flying too well: "Oh my, I was wrong."
I personally don't care for Leni Riefenstahl, but in principle there is no problem with asserting both positions at the same time: a fascist can produce great art; and fascination with fascism as a prop for sexual theater is a problem to be tackled politically and philosophically.
In general, though, she changed her mind often. Compare her notes on socialist Vietnam and her remarks on the Solidarity movement in Poland. Was it because of the actual problem of state socialism or on account of her following political and intellectual fashions? I'd say both. But that's common to most intellectuals on the left, and she didn't go as far to the right as a number of intellectuals of her time ended up. And I was rather pleasantly surprised by her strong criticism of pious American patriotism after 9/11, when such criticism was decidedly unpopular -- a great contrast to her role as a liberal supporter of imperialism in the name of human rights regarding Yugoslavia.
>She shifted the question by saying that all literature was borrowing
>and stealing so why bother to acknowledge anybody or provide
>footnotes.
She would have provided footnotes had she written for peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
>No one stopped to wonder why the great champion of people thinking
>for themselves needed to steal other people's words.
That's a stronger statement than the fact that she was a popularizer. Did she actually "steal" someone's words, and if so, which words from whom? -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>