AIDs and Its Metaphors [Hardcover]

Susan Sontag (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Illness as Metaphor , which focused on cancer, Sontag argued that the myths and metaphors surrounding disease can kill by instilling shame and guilt in the sick, thus delaying them from seeking treatment. She sees a similar process at work in the case of AIDS, the modern epidemic that has called forth metaphors of plague, implacable viral invaders, a scourge from the Third World. Such metaphors foster the stigmatizing of AIDS patients while spreading misinformation and panic, she argues, further claiming that clinical reports on the course of AIDS from "fledgling" to "full-blown" tacitly support the far-from-proven theory that everyone who tests positive for the AIDS antibody will die of the diease. The theory that AIDS originated in Africa, also unproven, feeds into the West's political paranoia and activates racial and sexual stereotypes. Regrettably, Sontag all but ignores intravenous drug users stricken with AIDS, and her curt dismissal of alternative therapies is shortsighted. Though some of her key points are already standard features of public discourse, this brief, brilliant essay discounts many of the fears and illusions surrounding the pandemic.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 95 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1ST edition (January 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374102570
• ISBN-13: 978-0374102579
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #908,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A strong, although dated, follow-up to her essay on illness and metaphors, November 26, 2006

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: AIDs and Its Metaphors (Hardcover)

First published as its own slim volume in 1989, "AIDS and Its Metaphors" (ISBN 0374102570) was much discussed and debated; it is still available in a paperback edition (0312420137) that unites this essay with its predecessor, "Illness and Its Metaphors." In the first book, which has rightfully become a classic, Sontag uses her firsthand experience with cancer to analyze how society uses metaphor to alienate and demonize those with disease; the second essay expands on those thoughts through the (secondhand) prism of AIDS.

Sontag's thoughts are characteristically unsystematic yet succinct and perceptive; her argument is particularly strong when she disparages the use of military metaphors, as if life were a Schwarzenegger movie in which the body is "invaded" by a "predator" virus and politicians and epidemiologists unite to "wage war" against the disease. Or when she discusses the shame and/or guilt society has attached to HIV infection, associating it with sex and drugs and immorality--and dispensing with the inconvenient truth that we are, after all, dealing with a thoughtless virus, not a disapproving jury.

But, for a reader nearly twenty years later, this follow-up essay falls short of her first book for two reasons beyond Sontag's control. First, there is the lack of immediacy obvious in her first essay; her tone in this second essay, by comparison, is sometimes frustratingly remote--although as someone who survived cancer, she can readily empathize with those who have HIV.

The second issue, of course, is the datedness of her material, which became acute almost directly after the book's publication. The progress against HIV and its related diseases, while still not satisfactory, far surpasses the sum of advancements in cancer treatment, and many of her comments are weighty with their primitive knowledge. (Sadly, however, much of the benefits of new treatments are limited largely to Western societies.) In fact, the "frenzy" and "hysteria" against AIDS so forcefully denounced by Sontag has given way to attitudes that might be just as frightening: complacency and neglect.

As a historical document, however, Sontag's piece is valuable--a reminder of how far many (but not all) Americans have come in their attitudes about AIDS and prejudices against those who have HIV. And some comments are surprisingly prophetic (if, in retrospect, commonsensical): "As the years add up in which the illness has been tracked, so does the possible number of years between infection and becoming ill." Similarly, her reminder that most of us (and many medical professionals) believed only three decades ago that humankind was on the verge of eradicating disease caused by bacteria or virus is a sobering splash of cold reality.