Writing and Political Correctness : A Study of Representation of AIDS in Susan Sontag's The Way We Live Now

With the permeation of multiculturalism on campuses, political correctness, in other words "a non discriminatory language movement", has become one of the agenda in the United States of America. At present American writers are not allowed to be so naive to cling to a romantic myth of artists with complete freedom of representation. Our writing and representation, whether we like it or not, is unable to stand outside of their context, their political situation. Writers are required to balance between their freedom as artists and their responsibility for political correctness or incorrectness. It also stimulates some writers to find and create new styles of writing. Sontag's The Way We Live Now proves that she is one of the keenly political-conscious writers. Her story should not be classified into neither AIDS-protest fictions nor AIDS-tragedies nor AIDS-epidemic horror stories which have been written and sold since 1982. As some insightful critics point out, AIDS has been violently and absurdly stigmatized. The tendency to fear and hate AIDS as the Other, as something evil and dissociated from respectable, good citizens, has not sufficiently weakened. AIDS is still located as "Untouchable", in the lowest level of each hierarchy of gender, race, class, and moral. People with AIDS are still suffering from its political location rather than from the illness, itself. The Way We Live Now rejects AIDS as a punishment, a retribution, a catastrophe, an alien, and an invader. Her story elaborately attempts to impress AIDS just as a disease on readers, never as metaphors. Many devices Sontag selected to demystify and neutralize AIDS are successful to some extent. But her story may be too sophisticated to give the readers such emotional impact and dramatic catharses as other seemingly sensational AIDS fictions can do. However, it does not depreciate the value and challenge of Sontag's trial.7KJ00004272445論文Articledepartmental bulletin pape