After the release of Illness as Metaphor in 1978, Susan Sontag followed up with AIDS and its Metaphors in 1989. The two books differed only in the specific diseases they examined – Illness as Metaphor focused primarily on cancer with an occasional look at tuberculosis while AIDS and its Metaphors examined sexually transmitted disease in general with a strong focus on AIDS.
Much like it was for Illness as Metaphor, the general idea that the military metaphor is particularly harmful to those suffering from disease is central to AIDS and its Metaphors. The metaphor leads society to view treatment as a form of mobilization and encourages taking whatever means necessary in the name of repelling the invader. This point of view is preposterous because it does not acknowledge that when the body is the battleground, ‘giving it all’ can simply mean death by a medical method. And if we really are committed to thinking about disease only by military metaphor, why not acknowledge that sometimes surrender is an option?
There was a good thought here about the pervasive fiction of ‘the easy death’ that accompanies any disease not considered awful or shameful. I thought about this for a while before concluding that perhaps this fiction enables the military metaphor because a patient who fears death from the awful and shameful disease is probably more like to be interested in radical treatment options. These patients are also probably more likely to accept the ‘battle at all costs’ mentality demanded by the military metaphor (1). If the idea of ‘the easy death’ were extended to all illnesses, the influence of the military metaphor would lose some of its power.
On a final and somewhat unrelated note, I liked learning that the origin of the political ‘left and right’ is rooted in its own metaphor. During the time of the French Revolution, the radicals sat to the left of the presiding officer while the conservatives sat to the right.
Footnotes / well, an endnote
0. Publication note
This book was released as a follow up to Illness as Metaphor. In fact, in the copy I read, the Illness as Metaphor was included in its entirety before the section AIDS and its Metaphors, so perhaps a better way to describe this book is to call it an additional essay, section, or addendum to Illness as Metaphor.
I still counted reading it as a full book, though. Don’t like it? Sue me…
1. Another way to put it…
On a related note, Sontag’s points out that the reputation of cancer adds to the suffering experienced by its patients. Again, my response worked out like it did in the main post – when everyone around the patient responds to the disease as if it is a death sentence, the patient comes under a lot of pressure to adopt the group’s mentality and embark on a ‘win at all costs’ battle.
