representation

I've got a copy of the first book of essays that Susan Sontag published: Against Interpretation and Other Essays.  

Someone told me something recently that I didn't know. I was talking to them about the debate about critical theory and the different arguments, and they told me that Susan Sontag was opposed to theory. I didn't know that. It makes sense though, in a lot of ways....like, for example, Sontag is one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century and wrote what could be called literary/ cultural criticism, or even theory, but she's not included in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. If she had written some kind of orthodox literary theory, someone of her calibre would surely have been included in the Norton. 

So, I suspect that her work is going to be a good example of how to do what theory does without doing theory. What first comes to my mind about Susan Sontag related to this issue is that, yes, she tends not to formulate rules and principles...she's more interested in qualities. She tends to make a series of observations or notes, without necessarily trying to make them relate to each other. That's just a vague impression I get from memory though, so it may not be completely accurate...in fact, in many ways, it certainly won't be accurate because all good writing has some kind of structure. 

so....I watched a few videos, and will make some miscellaneous notes....

• Camille Paglia despises her....Sontag claimed not to even know who Paglia was until around 1993, which Paglia claims is a lie to deflect the reality that Paglia had usurped her as the (or one of the) leading female intellectual(s).  
• I watched a video by Caleb Maupin called The thing about "Cultural Marxism" - Sontag, CIA, Cold War, Deconstruction which is fascinating but complicates (in interesting ways) the debate about critical theory, deconstruction, cultural Marxism, and brings Sontag into the story.
• Something extremely interesting from that video is the idea that cultural Marxism originally grew out of attempts to oppose actual Marxism and Communism, through an organisation called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, by making the whole debate about deconstruction and other theoretical concepts, so that constructive action (actually making marxism and communism happen) was off the table. And apparently the CIA had something to do with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, something which is affirmed by the fact that they have information about the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its agenda on their website: here. There are some problems with the time line here though because the Congress for Cultural Freedom was established in 1949/50 but the concept of deconstruction proper was only developed in the 60s. Also, Sontag, who Maupin brings into the story was writing in the 60s and after. But there's still some interesting links here. 
• As Caleb Maupin says, they constructed a Left that was opposed to communism and active Marxism [as a way of sidelining Marxism] 
• How does Susan Sontag come into it? According to Maupin, she played an active role in this enterprise, and worked with and was funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom and similar organisations. In his video, Maupin talks about how, in 1975, Sontag wrote an essay about a photo essay about tribes in Africa by Leni Riefenstahl (interesting, right?), who by this time had disavowed all association with Nazism and had always maintained that she didn't know anything about the Holocaust....Anyway, Sontag wrote an essay/ review saying that the book promoted fascism because the photos and commentary favoured community over family and promoted values such as courage, collective will and collaboration. At least that's how Caleb Maupin describes it. But why does he want to make Susan Sontag look bad? Because he's a Marxist, so he wants to make cultural Marxism, which he argues was developed to undermine real Marxism, seem ridiculous. 
• One of the most interesting take-aways is this: (and this is according to the CIA's own website) Between 1950 and 1970, the theoretical foundation of the CIA's strategy of opposing communism, was to promote a 'non-communist left'. So cultural Marxism and critical theory are, in terms of ideology, not what they appear to be. If this argument is correct, the whole point of cultural Marxism is not to promote Marxism - to subvert capitalism and western civilisation by culturally subverting it, because it wasn't able to overcome it in the 'real world' - but rather to undermine Marxism by situating it in a realm in which it would be innocuous. 
• I found a copy of Sontag's review of Riefenstahl's book: Fascinating Fascism. Interestingly, it's on a webpage that relates to Herbert Marcuse who was a prominent member of the Frankfurt school and a leading proponent of cultural marxism. 
• reading the review....it's very biting....describes the biographical note on the dust-jacket as being 'full of disquieting lies'
• ....and it continues in the same vein from there, arguing at length that Riefenstahl is lying about the extent and nature of her involvement with Nazism - that she's not 'reformed' in the way that she wants to represent herself as, and that she wasn't an idealistic, pure artist, innocent of any connection with the evil perpetrated by the Nazis, but was very much involved in the Nazi enterprise and closely associated with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders.  
• So far (I'm not up to the part where Sontag writes about Riefenstahl's photo essay) her criticism of Riefenstahl and her work is scathing. And maybe there's some validity to her argument. 
• Looking ahead I can see that what Sontag is going to do is cast this new book in the same light as Nazi propaganda, which is quite an interesting thing to do, even if, in the build up to it, Sontag felt it necessary to completely demolish the image that Riefenstahl wanted to present of herself as having moved on and, in fact, never been really taken in by the whole Nazi thing. 
• Was that initial movement necessary? Wasn't it a bit over-the-top to begin with such a full-on attack? Couldn't Sontag have gotten straight into a review of the actual book and maybe made some reference to the noteworthy parallels between Riefenstahl's propaganda work and her supposedly fresh and new 'artistic' work? 
• Also - to play devil's advocate - there's a bit of unfair framing going on here. The title of the review article makes it clear that the subject that is going to be discussed is fascism, and Riefenstahl's book is reviewed along with a book about the SS, so it's kind of clear from the start how things stand. 

overall, I have to say, I think Sontag makes a pretty good argument. And Maupin doesn't do justice to Sontag's argument - he presents a caricature of it. Of course it would be ludicrous to label the book an expression of fascism because it focuses on community over family and values like courage and collaboration, but Sontag doesn't do that /// her argument is more nuanced. She draws attention to some striking parallels between the underlying ideas and themes in Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda work and her new photo essay. Her conclusions - her central thesis - may be wrong (I'm not saying it is), but she makes a good (and thought provoking) argument.

but the question of whether Sontag was against theory....

I want to read some more work by and about Susan Sontag to really consider the question of her relationship to theory. It's hard to say anything about it from what I already know. If Sontag was involved with the Congress for Cultural Freedom or some later development of it, then arguably her work was related to cultural Marxism and critical theory. Caleb Maupin describes her as a leftist, which, again, in today's terms, puts her in the critical theory camp. But I don't know if that's born out by her actual work. To me, from what I already know and what I've read, it seems like Sontag was averse to the idea that you have to situate your work in a theoretical framework. So, that would mean the opposite - that she wasn't really interested in theory as a thing in itself. She was more interested in analysing art and literature and life than in theorising about them.