As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

by Susan Sontag

  So I grew up trying both to see + not to see. Trying to use up as much of my intellectual energy, my energy for seeing, on things “outside.” Ideas, art, politics, science, culture. And for the rest, seeing people, trying to mediate between those two problematic (but still seductive) ways of seeing.

  Seeing people’s pain > which leads to pity (compulsive desire to become someone’s caretaker, guardian, benefactor) which leads to, eventually, a sense of oppression, being trapped, desire for flight from the relationship.

  Seeing people’s (ethical) inadequacies, lack of nobility, + petty self-love + lack of ambition for themselves which leads to reducing them.

  Irene’s advent into my life was the great turning point. She introduced me to an idea deeply foreign to me—how incredible it seems now!—that of seeing myself. I thought my mind was only to see outside myself! Because I didn’t exist in the sense that others + everything else did. Everything else was an “object,” but how could I be an object to myself? Etc. etc.

  I then wanted to learn that new kind of seeing from Irene. At Irene’s hands—with a terrible, appropriative lust.

  Could I never have thought I was seen by anyone else before in my whole life? No, I didn’t. But how could I have been so resigned? When did I give up hoping anyone would see me? It must have been terribly early. (All those radical disruptions: Mrs. Enright leaving after 6 mo[nth]s, then Rosie, my parents coming + going, Rosie leaving when I was 4 or 5, then my father’s death, summer camp, my mother’s absences, being sent to Verona [SS’s maternal grandfather’s house in Verona, New Jersey].)

  [In the margin:] Check this

  And shortly after I must have started hiding, making sure they couldn’t see me. (The nailbiting started at camp, the asthma the next winter.) Always (?) this feeling of being “too much” for them—a creature from another planet—so I would try to scale myself down to size, so that I could be apprehend-able by (lovable by) them. With the unwavering resolution to sacrifice nothing I “really” was in the process. That scaling down, that mashing, was just a question of my being clever and “perceptive” enough. To see what they wanted. To see what they could bear. Trying not to give them less than I might (without bad results) nor more (and overload their capacities, frighten them, make them feel stupid, alienate them, make them hate me for making them feel stupid).

  But how could I have known or decided that I was “more” than they—all centered on my fabulous, cosmic voyaging mind? Even if it were true that potentially I had such a mind (but how could I have?) how would I have known? And how did I dare stake out such a claim for myself? With no support or stimulation or help from anyone? It seems like madness—that claim, and the steps I took to be worthy of it. (The Nobel Prize fantasy, the search for the appropriate vessel for my ambition.) And all the while searching for reconciliation with the others—to be loved, to be taken care of. But certainly I was acting in bad faith. (Wisely, I suppose.) If they didn’t come across, I always had my ambition, my mind, my secret being, my knowledge of my destiny to sustain me. So I was hedging my bets. If they came across, well + good. (But I certainly wasn’t going to give up the most important thing, my mind, to get their love.) And if they didn’t come across, “tant pis” [“too bad”]. I’d survive.

  I mustn’t underestimate, though, what I did give up—while faithfully guarding my “real” self as I understood it. I gave up, first of all, my sexuality. I gave up my ability to understand myself as an “ordinary” person; I gave up most of the ordinary range of access to myself, to my feelings. I gave up my self-confidence, my self-esteem in personal relations—particularly with men.* I gave up being at home in my body. Only a few kinds of relations were left—ones I specialized in particularly. Desexualized pedagogic friendship.

  I renounced trying to be attractive. I renounced the right to be “bad” or frail as everyone is “bad” or “frail” from time to time. Not that I wasn’t, just like everyone else! But I hated myself for it much more than [most] people do—castigated myself, dropped my self-esteem an inch lower. Wasn’t I supposed to be “better” than other people? That being so, then what was good enough for them could hardly be a proper standard for me. At the same time that I also thought I didn’t, in some respects, yet come up to their standard.

  Hence, many things. My pattern of violent thirsty impulsive intimacy with people—followed by phasing out. All that unsatisfied need for contact which builds up + builds—+ then bursts out upon a new person who comes into my life and seems to “see” me at all in a new or generous way. I seduce myself with my hope, my farseeing of what’s rich in that person—+ gloss over the limits that are equally discernible. And then, quickly, I can see only limits. And then comes [sic] the evasions, + the guilt, + the struggle to roll back the frontiers of the relation—to withdraw some of the promise of intimacy—without breaking off entirely. (When, often, rightly or wrongly, that’s what I really want to do.)

  This is hardly true any more. I set it down to make the record complete. But it was periodically true until very recently. My relations with Barbara and [SS’s friend the film scholar] Don [Eric Levine], though (“toutes proportions gardées” [ “all other things being equal”]) fraught with hazards of this kind, were both conducted in a much more perceptive, more mature way—against tremendous odds.

  My universe, then, in radical contrast with Eva’s, is underpopulated. I don’t experience the world as invading me, menacing me, assaulting me. The primal anxiety is absence, indifference, “the lunar landscape.”

  From which I can infer a lot about my first five years. Obviously neither my mother nor Rosie were out to get me, to break my spirit, to give me a bad opinion of myself. Nobody made fun of me or made me feel stupid or ugly or clumsy. They made me feel that the world was mechanical, usually polite (though sometimes incomprehensibly irascible), and incredibly obtuse and stupid people who, I must have thought, couldn’t be that stupid if they wouldn’t be so lazy or distracted or undermotivated. They could be intelligent, they could see, if they tried. But nobody wanted to try. They seemed so sluggish, so inert—and so predictable in most of their responses. Their touch was bony + insensuous + badly-timed (like my mother) or oppressive + too heavy + suffocating (like Rosie). So the lesson was: stay away from bodies. Maybe find someone to talk to. Thus, my early hallucination about the family of little people in the sewer pipe who were my friends.

  My early anxious attempts to make Judith a companion by stuffing some “facts” in her head … But it didn’t work. For how long did I think it would? So instead, I had the company of the immortal dead—the “great people” (the Nobel prize winners) of whom I would some day be one. My ambition: not to be the best among them, but only to be one of them, to be in the company of peers and comrades.

  Even today, so much of this remains. The ancient compulsion to populate the world with “culture” and information—to give the world density, gravity—to fill myself up. I always feel like I’m eating when I’m reading. And the need to read (etc. etc.) is like an awful raging hunger. So that I often try to read two or three books at a time.

  Diana [Kemeny] said a long time ago that “facts” had been “toxic” for me. What did she mean?

  And those hundreds of movie stills on my walls. That’s populating the empty universe, too. They’re my “friends,” I say to myself. But all I mean by that is that I love them (Garbo, Dietrich, Bogart, Kafka, Vra Chytilová): I admire them; they make me happy because when I think of them I know that there aren’t just ugly leaden people in the world but beautiful people; they’re a playful version of that sublime company to which I aspire. I never “fantasize” in Eva’s sense. She told me how she couldn’t bear to have all those images around her—looking at her. They would always be coming alive. They would be an “invasion.” For me, they’re reinforcements! They’re on my team; or rather, I am (hope to be) on theirs. They’re my models. They guard me from despair, from feeling there’s nothing better in the world than what I see, nothing
better than me! They don’t come alive, they don’t talk to each other or look at me: they aren’t, can’t in any way be aware of me, much less judge me, conspire against me, etc. They’re just pictures of people far away I don’t know. They’re just what they are. Photographs in frames on the wall of my living room which I chose, I framed, I mounted.

  So the problem isn’t how to keep things from coming alive that should be neutral, lifeless, unconcerned with my existence. My old solutions: “culture,” my mind, my passions for thought, for art, for spiritual + ethical distinction.

  I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create—or guarantee—existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names.

  Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.

  8/10/67

  Mother:—

  My acute anxiety + dread of her growing old, looking old—at one time, I even wished to die first because I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing that—It would be something like “obscene.”

  Why was that so terrible? For one thing, because her beauty was her one quality I genuinely admired. When I told her how beautiful she was, I really meant it. And I was so glad, so grateful to be able for once to say something to her I really, wholeheartedly, meant.

  And also, because I felt obscurely that I would be guilty. My existence had always been somewhat painful to her on that score—if I was, say, ten years old + her daughter, that set some limit on the Dorian Gray act. (How she—and I, in part—loved it when we were, as we often were, taken for sisters.) And if she could be made that unhappy about something, then it must be my fault. She had made me—and I had accepted the designation of—author of her happiness. (Letting me know she didn’t love Judith, making me feel she hadn’t loved Daddy. There was only her mother, at every mention of whom she wept—and me.)

  My mother came back from China when I was almost or just six this tragic woman, a Niobe, a casualty of life. And I was elected to prop her up, to give her transfusions, to keep her alive for the duration of my childhood.

  How would I do this? By befriending her. (Sacrificing my own childhood, my needs to learn, to be dependent; by growing up right away.) By flattering her.

  I was my mother’s iron lung. I was my mother’s mother. And delegated by my mother to be Judith’s mother, too. I felt flattered by my mother to have been entrusted with such a grown-up task, joyful + triumphant at having beaten out my sister so thoroughly in the competition for my mother’s love, and guilty over the extent of my triumph (as if I had made my mother not love my sister—as if I’d seduced her away from Judith—by being smarter, more interesting; by knowing how to flatter my mother) and sorry for Judith and, somewhere, deeply critical of my mother for her insensitivity + injustice to Judith. So I tried to approach Judith + make friends with her. But that didn’t work.

  My mother always “compelling” me to exonerate her for being a neglectful or ungenerous mother by being “miserable.” Tired all the time. Was she drinking + taking pills then?

  The shadow of her mother. As if, by still weeping over her death after all those years, M. was telling me—I’m a child, I’m fourteen years old (though I may look older). I’m not a woman, I’m not mother. And I was my mother’s mother’s successor. (I’m even named after her.) I take up exactly at the point where she left off when she died. My mother is still a young unhappy girl. I have to bring her up. (Employing great manipulative skills—to save her from the humiliation of knowing that’s what I’m doing, that’s what she wants me to do—and to save some of myself for myself, uncontaminated by frustrated attempts at “sharing,” by lies, by adulteration.)

  I’m afraid of my mother—afraid of her harshness, her coldness (cold anger—the rattling coffee cup); ultimately, of course, afraid that she’ll just collapse, fade out on me, never get out of that bed. Any parent, any affection (though I’ve assented to a fraudulent contract to get it) is better than none.

  My ultimate project: to keep her afloat, alive. My means: flattery, unlimited statements of how much I admire and adore her, and repeated rituals of denigration of my own worth. (I confess, to her reproaches, that I am cold + heartless + selfish. We weep together over how bad I am, then she smiles + hugs + kisses me + I go to bed. I’ve gotten what I wanted. I also feel unclean, unsatisfied, debauched.)

  To keep her alive I also have to amuse her, to distract her from a full knowledge of her misery. (Like a parent dangling a bauble before a child about to start bawling.) Observing her narcissism, which also repels me, I encourage it, I feed it with flattery. All the while looking at her anxiously to see if my words are having the desired effect, if I’m succeeding in cheering her up.

  But, of course, at the same time, I also hate her narcissism. It means involvement with herself not with me—therefore rejection of me. I feel contempt for her for being so weak that she cares how she is for “others”—so much that she gives so much time to washing, making up, dressing, etc. I feel superior to her because I’m entirely indifferent to these things—and vow I always will be when I’m grown up. I’m going to be an entirely different kind of woman. I despise her for the pleasure she takes in my admiration. She doesn’t see me. Doesn’t she see I want something from her? (even though I also do mean what I say)

  And later on—in my teens—I come to feel more divided about my mother still being beautiful, still looking so much younger than her chronological age. I’m still proud of her, boast about it to friends; but secretly, it’s becoming something “creepy” for me. One more instance of fraud / lie. The master-lie about who + what she is. I long for her to age + lose her looks just like everyone else. To stop being exceptional, so I can stop judging her by the special (lenient) rules.

  But if I’m afraid of my mother, she is also afraid of me. On a more specific level, afraid of my judgment. Afraid I will find her stupid, uncultivated (hiding Redbook under the bedcovers when I came in to kiss her goodnight), glamorous, morally deficient.

  And I, obligingly, do my best not to look, not to record in consciousness or ever consciously use against her what I see, or (at least) not to let her become [aware of] that + when I see.

  But there’s something more. Hard to describe. Like magical powers which my mother ascribed to me—with the understanding that if I withdrew them, she’d die. I must hang on, feeding her, pumping her up.

  My own aging: the fact that I look much younger than I am seems

  Like an imitation of my mother—part of the slavish thralldom to her. She sets the standards.

  Like still keeping up the secret promise to protect her—that I would lie about her age, help her to look young (what better way to establish that she’s younger than that I’m younger than I am?)

  Like my mother’s curse (I hate anything in me—especially physical things—especially physical things—that’s like her). I felt my tumor + the possibility of a hysterectomy as her bequest, her legacy, her curse—part of the reason I was so depressed about that.

  Like betraying my mother—for I look younger when it doesn’t do her any good. Now she is getting old + looks it; but I’m not, I stay young—I increase the difference of age between us.

  Like a trap she’s laid for me—so now people think David + I are sister + brother, + that pleases me immensely, turns me on. And I remember her—+ I boast of my age dragging the number into conversation when it’s not really necessary, adding a year on to David’s age when I speak of him—and then enjoying the surprise (flattering?) on people’s faces. So I can feel I’m not like her—not weak, not narcissistic—but also fear that I really am.

  My task: to prevent my mother from truly seeing herself. Estimating it was a knowledge she couldn’t bear. Therefor
e, encouraging her stupidity—once I had diagnosed it. All the while, then, knowing myself—by what I knew—to be much stronger than she. (The stronger one is he who knows more, can see more.)

  [In the margin:] one definition

  But, at the same time, being so weak. Doubly weak because 1) I was a child and 2) I had forfeited the defenses natural to a child—the unselfconsciousness, expressions of aggression + frustration, tantrums, etc. I had disarmed myself by my own seeing. (I had seen too much—her weakness, her lack of self-esteem, the weakness of her ego.) It would be too cruel to take advantage of her on the basis of what I had seen. Besides, I was trying to be her protector. Wasn’t that the pledge I’d made to myself for far from selfless motives? It seemed my best chance of getting any love + attention at all.