ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IMAGES
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SONTAG, SUSAN Feminist, writer and critic, 1933 - 2004
I long ago saw a photo of Susan Sontag with another of my favorites, Elena Poniatowska, conferring together at an early rally against the war in Vietnam.
She was also a good friend and collaborator with Robert Wilson. Here she is with Miranda Richardson, Lucinda Childs, Christopher Knowles and Bob, below. She wrote, "There are many great theater directors, but I wouldn't necessarily be able to decipher their productions after seeing five minutes. Show me five minutes of a Bob Wilson show, and I'd say, That's Bob."
In 1998, she traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, below, to lend moral support to the Zapatista movement, attracting an enormous amount of attention and admiration throughout Latin America.
In the September 24, 2001, New Yorker magazine she wrote:
"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue), whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."
Later she wrote, "By all means, let us grieve together, but let us not be stupid together."
When she died in 2004, the world press lamented the loss of an important "critical voice of the West," below, from EL PAIS, Madrid, Spain.
NOTICIAS noted that "the United States has lost its critical conscience."
Mexico City's LA JORNADA, as expected, covered its front page with a beautiful tribute.
And for Oaxaca's daily, ROTATIVO, I was honored to write the obituary for a woman I had greatly admired for many years, below.
(NOTE: In "Recent Writings" you can read my "Susan Sontag, An Homage.")
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