Sontag wrote the first piece, Illness as Metaphor, in 1978 when at 42 she was being treated for breast cancer. An alt treatment at the time to chemo and radiation was psychotherapy which assumed there was a "cancer personality" that needed to be reconciled in order for the patient to get well. Sontag compares and contrasts the popular perceptions of TB patients w/ cancer patients to explore the stigma surrounding cancer and how conventional use of cancer as a metaphor or the reliance on metaphor in talking abt cancer is harmful to the patient. Ten years later, she revisited her illness as metaphor thesis to focus on the AIDS epidemic and how we came to culturally define that disease by the people it afflicted. In some ways, Sontag suggested, there's a stark difference btw how we consider cancer patients (as somehow struck down at random; "why me") and AIDS patients (who primarily are infected through voluntary contact w/ another) but ultimately, we are still looking at, talking abt, and even to an extent trying to treat/prevent illness - as a metaphor to the detriment of all (most esp but not only patients). Obvs this was a personal read for me and while some of it felt dated, a lot resonated particularly on the division of the culture of cancer vs. the experience of cancer. I'm still processing and hope to write more abt what I took away from it and also look at it against When Breath Becomes Air, which significantly employs metaphor for its title but actually speaks very plainly about disease. A note: Sontag successfully treated her breast cancer in the '70s and was in remission for nearly 25 yrs. She died in 2004 from an aggressive strain of leukemia, possibly related to the treatment she'd previously received. #bookworm #dec2016reads #playingcatchup #notmorbid #itsjustadisease #thyca
