How do illness and pain define the human experience? Susan Sontag and Zadie Smith

Dec 22

“I do feel comforted to discover I’m not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.
”

— Zadie Smith, Intimations

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

— Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

How do illness and pain define the human experience?

Students joined class from all over the U.S. on Sunday, October 24 for a conversation about Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and Zadie Smith’s newest collection of essays Intimations.

The books provided the context for a rich and meaningful conversation on illness and pain (including Covid-19) and the human experience.

Student Questions

Why these two books?

How could these two women quiet their lives and turn trauma into this kind of brilliant work?
What happens when we turn illnesses into metaphors? How does turning an illness into a metaphor shape the experience of being ill or suffering?
How has our understanding of disease, particularly cancer, changed since Sontag wrote her essay?
“Disaster demanded a new dawn” (p.11, Smith) – imagining post-pandemic life as a return to normalcy vs. an opportunity to change, how do we make sense of the impact of Covid?
What are the challenges and benefits of positioning disease as a “battle” with winners and losers?
When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?
Is it understood as more often than not a sort of punishment for "bad living"? Or more as just terrible luck? Or both?
In reference to Sontag's work: How often do you suspect diseases are still associated with class and economics?
In reference to Smith's work: How would America's extremities fade "if the virus and inequalities it creates were ever to leave us"?
"TB is often imagined as a disease of poverty and deprivation." What does this mean?

Mary Finn

How do illness and pain define the human experience? Susan Sontag and Zadie Smith

How do illness and pain define the human experience?

Students joined class from all over the U.S. on Sunday, October 24 for a conversation about Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and Zadie Smith’s newest collection of essays Intimations.

The books provided the context for a rich and meaningful conversation on illness and pain (including Covid-19) and the human experience.

Student Questions

Why these two books?

How could these two women quiet their lives and turn trauma into this kind of brilliant work?

What happens when we turn illnesses into metaphors? How does turning an illness into a metaphor shape the experience of being ill or suffering?

How has our understanding of disease, particularly cancer, changed since Sontag wrote her essay?

“Disaster demanded a new dawn” (p.11, Smith) – imagining post-pandemic life as a return to normalcy vs. an opportunity to change, how do we make sense of the impact of Covid?

What are the challenges and benefits of positioning disease as a “battle” with winners and losers?

When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it?

Is it understood as more often than not a sort of punishment for "bad living"? Or more as just terrible luck? Or both?

In reference to Sontag's work: How often do you suspect diseases are still associated with class and economics?

In reference to Smith's work: How would America's extremities fade "if the virus and inequalities it creates were ever to leave us"?

"TB is often imagined as a disease of poverty and deprivation." What does this mean?

Does Our Work Define Us? Should It? Bohumil Hrabal’s novel Too Loud a Solitude

How will the pandemic shape us? Camus’ The Plague