Susan Sontag - Further Investagation

Susan Sontag References

•         http://www.susansontag.com/prize/2010Winners.shtml

•         http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/dec/29/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries

•         http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/susan_sontag.html

You have all been given these references as hard copy.

For your self-study please follow all three, they will help you to get a better picture of who Sontag was and what she stood for.  The websites will help you frame her work and hopefully will promote further thought.

Task

Visit the sites and consider their content

Either by posting an extract from a site or by summarising your findings, indicate something that you found interesting.

Make a personal comment about your findings.  Try to make a comment about how these websites may make you view her work.

Always be mindful of bias.  Comment on the reliability of your source.

Susan Sontag

Clearly Susan Sontag was a wise woman.  Her writings are intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, reflective and at times revolutionary.

I do not ask you to agree with Sontag but I do ask that you engage with her work.

Task

Read the rest of the extract from AIDS and its Metaphors

There will be lines in there that challenge you.  Personally I find some of her writing a complete assault on basic understandings that I thought were accurate; a total challenge to some of my fundamental thinking.  This can only be a good thing.

Post some of the lines that you find most interesting.

Write a comment on them. Justify the choice of quotation.

Form and post a theory of knowledge question that relates to the quotation.

If music be the food of love...play on

Theory of Knowledge is everywhere.

Theory of Knowledge applies to everything.

What types of 'ways of knowing' are expressed through music?
What forms of knowledge are located in songs?

Many songs are written about personal experience. 
How far is experiential knowledge valid?
Is experiential knowledge more or less valid than scientific knowledge, say?

The music we like tends to mean something to us on a personal level.
Can we learn through empathy?
Can we learn through intuition?
Do we trust the opinion or message of someone we relate to more easily?
Should we?

Task

Post a few lines from your selected song
Tell us what it is and who it is by and where it is from
Explain why you selected the song
Post a few theory of knowledge style questions based on the song

Make some somment on the questions and ideas expressed above.