Illness as a metaphor

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Illness as Metaphor , Eng. Illness as Metaphor is the German title of an essay by the US publicist and writer Susan Sontag that was published in 1977 (in Germany and Austria in 1978) . She succumbed to cancer herself in 2004 at the age of 71.

In the 1970s the American public debated the idea that cancer could be understood as an image for something else and thus as a metaphor . In the case of cancer, the disease should reflect the patient's inability to express and act out feelings, and ultimately this "inability" should even be the cause of the disease. In this perspective, cancer would ultimately be self-inflicted.

After Sunday, AIDS has replaced cancer today . In her follow-up work AIDS and Its Metaphors (published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York NY, 1st edition on January 1, 1989), she worked hard to ensure that illness should not be understood as a metaphor.

Illness as a Metaphor was first published in three parts in January and February 1977 in the New York Review of Books ; the book edition followed later.

expenditure

  • Susan Sontag: Illness as a Metaphor . Fischer Taschenbuch (number 3823), Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-596-23823-4 (English: Illness as metaphor . Translated by Karin Kersten , Caroline Neubaur , licensed edition from Hanser-Verlag, Munich, Vienna 1978).
  • Susan Sontag: AIDS and its metaphors . Hanser, 1997, ISBN 978-3-446-15403-2 .
  • Susan Sontag: Illness as a Metaphor & AIDS and its Metaphors . Hanser , Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-20425-3 (English: Illness as metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (First Edition by: Picador, New York, NY 2001) . Translated by Karin Kersten, Caroline Neubaur).

Web links

  • Susan Sontag: Illness as Metaphor. In: The Vault. New York Institute for the Humanities, October 22, 2018, accessed on October 25, 2018 (recording of the lecture during the James Lectures from October 1977).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Susan Sontag: Illness as metaphor. New York 1977 and 1978.
  2. ↑ Denis Donoghue: Disease Should Be Itself. In: The New York Times. July 16, 1978, accessed October 26, 2018 .