Job & Edu

Regarding the Pain of Others

From Picador

Author : Susan Sontag
Binding : Paperback
DeweyDecimalNumber : 303.6
EAN : 9780312422196
ISBN : 0312422199
Label : Picador
Manufacturer : Picador
NumberOfPages : 144
ProductTypeName : ABIS_BOOK
PublicationDate : 2004-02-01
Publisher : Picador
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Customer Reviews

Rating:
Summary: Great work on the power and deceipt of images
Comment: Susan Sontag is known as a lover as well as a critique of photography. In Regarding the Pain of Others she focuses on the impact of horrible war-images - starting with paintings such as Goya's Disasters of the War (1810-1820) going up to the present, in which first photography and then film have taken over. She rightly and strongly criticises the old idea that 'pictures show the truth', and horrible pictures 'the truth of war', an idea especially popular in the Interwar Years (Ernst Friedrich, Virginia Woolf), but certainly anything but dead after 1945. Pictures have frames so they are framed (even when they are not staged or manipulated) and therefore can not show the truth in all its nuance, in all its effects. And besides: the photographer can have his or her intentions when painting or shooting the image, but that is not to say that this intention is indeed the consequence publication will have. A book that makes you think, and that is always a compliment.

Leo van Bergen
Author of: Before my Helpless Sight. Suffering, dying and military medicine on the Western Front 1914-1918 (Ashgate Publishing 2009)
Rating:
Summary: Who is the "we"?
Comment: The title Regarding the Pain of Others refers to the dominant way in which we as modern humans view war and other atrocities, namely we regard such horrors through printed images. The book is concerned primarily with photographs but sometimes delves into films. Sontag suggests that we are inundated with wave after wave of depictions of atrocities, and it is this flood that defines our experience of war and atrocities. The larger question that Sontag proposes is what is the result of this flood of images? What reactions does it cause in humans? Is this good or is this bad? I think the key to the book is to accept this flood of images as a system. All systems create a dominant view. Sontag tries to define this dominant view that emerges from this flood. She looks at all of this in all its complications. She is clearly not a simple minded thinker. And that is the pleasure of this book. As she gazes at war photography (we don't even have to see it; we have seen enough of it to know), we think about how we ourselves experience atrocity and war photography in our daily lives. When I look at war pictures I am always surprised at the cruelty of human beings. Susan Sontag writes that someone who is perennially surprised about the reoccurrence of human depravity and who feels constantly incredulous about the capability of human beings to inflict cruelty on others has not reached psychological adulthood. And I think she is correct in that; I, like many others, have not. I find I am still interested in why and who's to blame. Perhaps being concerned with why and who is to blame isn't constructive; it may only serve to keep one from truly regarding the suffering in the world. Does living in flood of pictures and horror spectacles bolster this? Does it make us feel so remote from others that distant acts of human cruelty seem alien to us. I'm not sure, but the book has certainly made me think about it. This is certainly a book to read and if possible read again!
Rating:
Summary: "the ethical value of an assault by images"
Comment: In her On Photography, which appeared 35 years ago, Susan Sontag worried that the public's continuous exposure to horrific photos of the violence of war might backfire. The purpose (or at least one of the purposes) of such photos is to rouse opposition to the cruelty of war. But the continuous publication of them can surfeit and benumb, encouraging instead public passivity.

In her Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag rethinks this claim (even though it's now become received wisdom), suggesting that such photos in fact haunt us. True, our attraction to images of suffering can be prurient (Plato, in the Republic, was the first to catalog this human curiosity). The way in which a photo of suffering is framed, moreover, can transform it from an object of horror into one (primarily) of heroism. But notwithstanding these and other manipulations, photos of war victims remain what Sontag calls "emblems of suffering" that awaken us to the fact that the violence of warfare is very real indeed, and that we may be complicitous in it, notwithstanding the fact that, as "spectators," we are far removed from the imaged violence. Photographs shouldn't be "supposed to repair our ignorance about the history and causes of the suffering [they] pick out and frame." But they are effective "invitation[s] to pay attention" (p. 117). Viewing photographs of suffering is no substitute for hard thinking about war, murderous violence, and our moral responsibilities. But photos can spark and fuel such reflection (p. 103). For those of us who will never have firsthand experience of the horrors of war, this vicarious exposure can be a moral catalyst. That we can turn away from such photos does nothing to "impugn the ethical value of an assault by images" (p. 116).

Like all Sontag-authored extended essays, this one is so rich in ideas and insights that at times it seems (but ony, I believe, seems) to ramble. Along the way, Sontag discusses the history of war photography, the ethical dilemma of merely "looking at" atrocities rather than doing something about them, the French school of "the spectacle" founded by Guy Debord and made "respectacle" by Baudillard and Bataille. Chapter headings would be profoundly helpful here, as well as an occasional summary. But Sontag presumably wants to provoke thought in her readers, and hesitates to provide roadmaps.

Moreover, accompanying photographs would be helpful, especially since Sontag refers to a good baker's dozen to illustrate her arguments. The curious thing--and perhaps this was her point--is that any educated reader is likely to form an immediate memory image of the photo under discussion. We are, indeed, haunted by such photos.

An intriguing, genuinely thought-provoking book--and thought-provoking books are rare these days.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent anti-war book
Comment: Surely Susan Sontag addresses the pain of others and how to deal with it, but her book goes deeply against all war, and as such, should have been read by George W. Bush before he started the Iraq war. She shows a great deal of sensitivity to what pain is caused by war, and how senseless it is. This is one of her books that makes me regret that she never received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Fortunately, she received a number of other literary prizes she nobly deserved, such as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Rating:
Summary: A Book that Everybody Must Read!!!
Comment: Susan Sontag only passed away recently. She was more of a philosopher, social activist, literary critic, and essayist than a fictional writer. In this book, she points out British writer Virginia Woolfe's view of war in today's society. War is a crime and an outrage where ever it might be whether it's in the boardroom, Wall Street, Sarajevo, Kabul, Baghdad, etc. War comes in many shapes and forms but what does war really mean to us. Is it about killing human lives or what about the destruction of the human soul in our society, we are transformed by the images displayed on cable television about the two wars going on and the lives lost. We are close to four thousand American soldiers being killing in Iraq. We had no reason to go but we did and now we must clean up the mess. I totally support our troops overseas because they are selfless human beings who would sacrifice their lives for their country. But what about the leaders who sent them there only to return home in coffins or end up at Walter Reed Medical Center for the injured veterans. Are the injured better off than the casualties? Maybe not because they have to live with their images of war and their actions. Sontag's book works because it makes us think about war without thinking so much about it. Where do we stand? Of course, it would be a perfect world without war and peace prevailed but war is a fact of life. Maybe Sontag should have used examples of wartime strategies that are not so gory or gloom with images of death and destruction. She did not live long enough to see Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast. What about the business world where casualties are not just in coffins but at the unemployment office? This book made me think so that's why I'm writing about this situation. We lose 18,000 Americans every year because they lack health insurance, that's six times the amount of the victims of September 11, 2001. Maybe we don't have to declare war, uninsured Americans are at war with a society who has neglected them or disregarded their needs for whatever reason.