As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

by Susan Sontag

  Ivan Illich [the Austrian Catholic social critic, whom SS met in the late 1960s] mentioned what a radical transformation would be wrought in a society if one passed one simple law: that nothing within the borders of the country could move faster than 30 m.p.h. Think what a change that would make in the priorities + quality of goods produced. Such a country would produce cars that would last for 50 years.

  “One becomes stupid as soon as one stops being passionate.” ([Claude Adrien] Helvétius)

  Whatever doesn’t land you in jail gets co-opted.

  Read on:

  The Chaco war (1935)

  The slaughter in Madagascar in 1947

  The massacre of 45,000 Algerians at Setif in 1944

  The North Italian factory occupations in 1919–20

  The Bosnian student movement before WWI

  …

  1970

  2/4/70 Paris

  The thought is never (?) “heavy”—it’s the anxiety alongside it.

  The longing to touch / be touched. I feel gratitude when I touch someone—as well as affection, etc. The person has allowed me proof that I have a body—and that there are bodies in the world.

  Being a big eater = desire to affirm that I have a body. Identifying refusal of food with refusal of the body. Irritation with people who don’t eat—even anxiety (as initially with [SS’s lover during this period] C[arlotta del Pezzo]) and revulsion (as with Susan [Taubes]). Lesson of last 5 months: I don’t have to eat a lot.

  2/10/70 New York

  Long conversation with Stephen [Koch] this afternoon—immensely helpful.

  I haven’t so many alternatives as I thought—in fact, only two: uproot the feeling, tell her [Carlotta] to go to hell—or jouer le jeu [“play the game”].

  Of course, it will be the second. The age of innocence is over.

  This is not the end of the story—only the beginning of Phase Three.

  Phase One was July–August: passion, hope, longing. Phase Two dates from my return to New York on Sept. 2 until this last week in Paris: intensified longing, obsession, suffering, paralysis in work, magical chastity, innocence (still), joy at the feeling of being loved, being patient waiting for our life together to begin.

  Now Phase Three. The time of playing the game. Carlotta cannot be the center of my life, only (possibly) part of a plural center that will include work, friends, other affairs. I must allow her her liberty to be with me when she wants to and then go away again. I must learn to use, and genuinely enjoy, the liberty that such a situation allows me.

  I must appear to be strong—which means that I really must be strong. I must not offer her my suffering, my longing for her, as a proof of my love. I must not even tell her so often that I love her. I must not try to persuade her, with words, that it will be good for her to be with me. (This awakens her fear of dependence.) I must not ask her to reassure me, to tell me she loves me. I must not ask her when she is coming to New York, only [say] that I hope she will come.

  Above all, I must not act as if what has happened this week is decisive (to ask her to reassure me that it is decisive). Nothing is decisive for her. But if I ask her to tell me that it isn’t, she will feel cornered—as if she is being asked for a commitment.

  I must show that I am interested in (get pleasure from) my work, David, my friends. If I deny them for her, that is a sign of weakness—and she feels threatened. (For me, of course, it is a sign of strength—and evidence of my love.)

  I must be strong, permissive, unreproachful, capable of joy (independently of her), able to take care of my own needs (but playing down my ability, or wish, to take care of hers). Remember what she said the other day about finding me so different from the way I appeared at first (autonomous, “cool”)? It was that person she was originally attracted to. She must still sense that in me from time to time. I cannot ever show her all my weakness. I must limit my thirst for candor.

  I cannot persuade her with words to love me, to trust me, to be with me. It must be done with actions. She must come to me freely. I must act as if I expect her to do that—but not say it, above all not ask her to confirm it. I must act as if ten days with her is as good as ten months.

  I can tell her that I feel stronger (in myself, in my love for her) because of this past week—but not that “we” are stronger. That’s already a demand for commitment.

  I must not ask her to ask me to wait for her, to be patient, to have hope. I must simply show that I am, in fact, doing these things—without anxiety, without too much suffering.

  Conversation with Eva [Berliner]:

  The meaning of Carlotta’s “collapse” this past week: You see, I would if I could, but I can’t. For the behavior to be effective (i.e. self-exonerating) the collapse must be “total,” which excludes even the slightest gesture of consolation or reassurance to me. For if she could make such a gesture, that would mean she was capable of concern for me (of feeling a sense of responsibility) and therefore that the collapse was not total, and if not total then demands could conceivably be made on her, etc. (That, not sadism—conscious or unconscious—explains why she couldn’t give the smallest reassurance those last days.)

  What I have to get over: the idea that the value of love rises as the self dwindles. What Carlotta doesn’t want—should anyone want it?—is that I’m prepared to give up (disvalue) every-thing for her. What she was attracted to in me was that I was a person with interests, success, strength.

  A bad lesson I learned from Irene, who did want me to give up everything for her, and did measure my love by the amount I was willing to give up.

  The state that Carlotta was in last week: she has no “I.” “It” was making her do things. That’s her problem: not having a real “I.” That is, hating herself. That is, believing that she’s a killer—that she’s fundamentally bad for people. (Hence, the meaninglessness of the notion of “responsibility” for a person without an “I.”) But no person can give Carlotta an “I.” Even if one could, it would feel threatening to her. A person who can give you an “I” can also take it away.

  Eva said: I would be afraid of someone who was willing to give up everything for me.

  Carlotta wants from me, first, the show of strength—the reassurance that she can’t destroy me. That, at this moment, much more than my reassurance that I still love her.

  2/12/70

  Conversation with Stephen [Koch]:

  American European

  Analysis > > > inner modification intuition > > > action

  Psychoanalyis astrology

  Self-manipulation—goal of self-transcendence one can’t change one’s nature

  There must be something better than my nature I have to be alone (everything shakes down—I see what I feel)

  Incessant talking (talking it out) everyone ultimately is alone

  Help me

  What is the framework that explains why then I did X and now I did Y It’s vulgar (unnecessary, creates problems) to talk a lot; you either know or you don’t know

  I did it because … Don’t be so “logical”

  I want to be better than I am Take my latest words (actions) as me—why is it a problem for you that I said something different earlier? I felt differently then

  Frontier thesis of America (let’s move on—value of change for its own sake)

  How would you advise me? (What should I do?) No one can advise anyone else (dangerous; meaningless)

  Do you know how much I love you? (different kinds of love) love = love

  It’s distinctive to be alone (unnatural) Things happen—I control very little

  I must take responsibility for everything I do; I am the author of my life Meaninglessness of the idea of making oneself do what one doesn’t want to do

  Making plans Meaninglessness of question: what ought I to do?

  What am I to do? i.e. what ought I to do?

  I am a “decision head.” I generalize from my experience. My principal source of self-esteem is that I can decide, and act (fo
rce myself) even when I don’t want to do something. I am “in control” of myself. Function of intelligence: self-overcoming.

  Carlotta an “occasionalist”—little connective causal tissue between acts (statements). She doesn’t feel bound by her “intentions.”

  A month ago I said to Don [Eric Levine]: being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person. But not now! I defined love in Paris as spectacular (total) generosity.

  I have an anticipatory view of my life.

  Carlotta would never say of an action of hers that it was a “mistake,” because she doesn’t see herself as acting on the basis of judgment made of calculations—but only on the basis of feelings and capabilities. Feelings can’t be a mistake. Something she’s done can be bad—or sad—but not a mistake. —I often speak of actions I’ve performed as mistakes because I assume an element of conscious judgment, evaluation (is this efficacious? What are its long-range consequences?) enters, properly so, into my decisive actions.

  Carlotta not locked into an ambivalence problem—as Eva has often been. She operates through violent swings of the pendulum, but not because she has, say, ambivalent feelings towards Beatrice [Carlotta’s lover when SS met her] which cause her to move toward me, then experience ambivalence toward me which causes her to return to Beatrice, then long for me, etc. She is not ambivalent about either one of us!

  Carlotta doesn’t take full credit (get the proper benefits in self-esteem) from her heroic quitting of heroin. Not: I stopped, therefore … but: it was possible for me to stop.

  Beatrice’s being “Chinese” made Carlotta feel safe. I’m loved, but not too much—not too expressively, too possessively, too inquisitively.

  One of the strongest psychic factors in Beatrice’s favor: C. feels grateful to her, indebted to her—for feeling more “well” in the past four years. Apparently, she is. Beatrice must really have been good to her. But it’s also true that Beatrice subtly (not so subtly?) encourages—promotes—this sense of indebtedness in Carlotta. Her remarks to me at our summit conference in the Hotel Santa Lucia in Naples on August 1st: “I’ve given Carlotta four years of my life”—“Do you realize how fragile she is?”

  In Milan once, I said to C. “Don’t you see that you are the author of your life?” She replied that it wasn’t true.

  2/15/70

  The functions of the seminar I’ve been having re C. this week with Stephen, Don, Eva, Joe [Chaikin], Florence [Malraux]: to erect a structure of understanding (comparative worldviews, comparative consciousness) to transcend sorrow, anxiety, false hope—to plot strategy (have “realistic” hope, not make mistakes)—to experience mastery (through making an effort of intelligence) to counter-act emotional defeat, sense of impotence—to draw closer to my friends, experiencing the ways in which they are intelligent, sensitive, loving, and can therefore nourish me (the experience that I am not alone even if abandoned by C.)

  Being in love (l’amour fou [“crazy love”]) a pathological variant of loving. Being in love = addiction, obsession, exclusion of others, insatiable demand for presence, paralysis of other interests and activities. A disease of love, a fever (therefore exalting). One “falls” in love. But this is one disease which, if one must have it, is better to have often rather than infrequently. It’s less mad to fall in love often (less inaccurate for there are many wonderful people in the world) than only two or three times in one’s life. Or maybe it’s better always to be in love with several people at any given time.

  Qualities that turn me on (someone I love must have at least two or three):

  1. Intelligence

  2. Beauty; elegance

  3. Douceur [“gentleness, sweetness”]

  4. Glamor; celebrity

  5. Strength

  6. Vitality; sexual enthusiasm; gaiety; charm

  7. Emotional expressiveness, tenderness (verbal, physical), affectionateness

  One great discovery in the last years (embarrassing) has been how much I respond to 4—Jasper—even Dick Goodwin, Warren Beatty—now C.

  Intelligence means having a sensibility (articulatable, verbal-izable) that if not really original has at least a definite personal signature. That I can be thrilled by things a person says. (Philip had it—Irene—Jasper—Eva)

  Glamor requires a space between the person and an image (title) that preceeds the person. “This is X the—Jasper the painter. Carlotta the duchess. Warren the movie star.” (But not Eva the German teacher—a role instead of an image. No space “between” a person and a role.)

  Re: conversation with Ivan Illich:

  Schools are an institution for the production of children. Cf. [Philippe] Ariès [the author of Centuries of Childhood]

  Replacement of “learning” by “being taught.” Now students demand not to learn but to be taught.

  Assumption behind “modern,” “Western” concept of the school:

  1. universal and, ideally, compulsory

  2. age-specific (for “children”)

  3. graded curriculum

  4. testing >>> certification

  5. role of teacher

  Schooling a lottery, in which theoretically everyone has a chance at the Nobel Prize. Reinforces and institutionalizes class society, hierarchical relations.

  Why not invoke 1st Amendment against schools (as there should not be “established” religion, there should be no other graded curricula); also the 5th Amendment (testing = self-incrimination); and the anti-trust laws (wish to establish uniform educational standard)? Instead of insisting that all people be schooled during “childhood,” why not issue an Edu-card to every person at birth entitling the person to a minimum number of five years of schooling, to be cashed in (used) whenever the person elects—with dividends, perhaps, if one defers some schooling to the “adult” years.

  With Ivan, after Bob Silvers [a founding editor of The New York Review of Books and a lifelong friend of SS’s] left:

  I make an “idol” of virtue, goodness, sanctity. I corrupt what goodness I have by lusting after it.—And I’ve always thought my idols were the best part of my consciousness! (My idol = my moral aspirations; my private pantheon—Nietzsche, Beckett, etc.; my “standards” for myself.)

  I neglect the convivium (many people) in the hunger for the kind of fullness of being only possible in the dialogue (verbal mostly, sometimes physical) with one other person.

  Ivan says he is aware before he acts of the possibility of making a mistake, but never looking back on his actions. He is aware of committing sins—e.g. being cold, exploitative, cruel. One can be forgiven by a person against whom one has sinned. But one can’t forgive oneself. What can you do with the awareness of having sinned? Nothing. Live with it. (Being forgiven doesn’t cancel the sin.)

  Process of dying (sterben) versus death (todt). Process of dying = one aims to “fall free.” English doesn’t have two words for death + dying (Sterben / Todt; nekros / thanatos) as it doesn’t have two words for hope (l’espoir / l’espérance).

  Every time a woman is raped (and murdered) in a big city, that’s a lynching. Women’s Lib. How the metaphor illuminates. What is sexual (i.e. “private” according to male-dominated society) becomes a political (i.e. public / social) crime—rooted in the public, ideological subjection of women.

  Dialectic of the relation between conscious and consciousness:

  —function of language (language promotes consciousness / an increase of consciousness is not only philosophically debilitating (cf. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, Nietzsche), but, more importantly, morally debilitating)

  Before the “school” there were collective forms of training consciousness in all traditional societies: ritual, pilgrimage, begging, silence, liturgy.

  Ivan: There is no greater corruptor than the word of God

  Isn’t it spiritual arrogance on my part to feel corrupt (compromised) every time I am not present in the fullness of my being? A kind of moral hysteria? (Problem of [Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film] Persona
—has Martin the answer?) Denial of creatural reality.

  One doesn’t speak language, one speaks (at any given moment) a particular language. One doesn’t make music-in-general, but operates, at any given time, within a specific tonal system.

  Kids now are open to death (todt—being killed) while dying as a (living) process is increasingly meaningless to them. Hence, it’s no argument that cigarettes cause cancer or that heroin addiction is eventually fatal, for that’s one of their points. The taste for apocalypse (being killed). At least death by, say, drugs is self-driven, individual, as opposed to death by nuclear holocaust.