100 definitions
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Susan Sontag: top 100 quotes
100 definitions on 38 concepts
Death (n.) is odd at second hand — when we hear many months later that someone has died, it makes a mockery of death, reducing it to news. And news is always a little unreal which is why we bear to take in so much of it.
Death (n.) is the obscene mystery to those without religious consolations or without a sense of its naturalness. For such people it becomes the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.
The Aphorism (n.) is a historically-colored voice which, when adopted, inevitably suggests certain attitudes. Aphoristic thinking is impatient thinking: by its very brevity or concentratedness, it presupposes a superior standard.
The Aphorism (n.) teaches us the sameness of wisdom as anthropology teaches us the diversity of culture.
The Aphorism (n.) is a mode of thinking that constructs thinking as an obstacle race: the reader is expected to get it fast, and move on.
The Aphorism (n.) is aristocratic thinking, demanding that you should get it fast, without spelling out all the details.
The Aphorism (n.) is a kind of impatient thinking: by its very brevity or concentratedness, it presupposes a superior standard.
The Aphorism (n.) is not an argument; it is too well-bred for that.
An Aphorism (n.) is not an argument. The reader is expected to get it fast, and move on.
The Work of art (n.) is a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open an denriched.
Peace (n.) is that which most people really mean victory, the victory of their side.
The Critic (n.) is tasked with the important job of savaging what is mediocre or meretricious.
Intelligence (n.) is a kind of taste: taste in ideas.
A Thing (n.) is a thing, not what is said of that thing.
The Photograph (n.) is a grammar and an ethics of seeing.
Interpretation (n.) is a highly dubious practice which makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.
Interpretation (n.) is a radical strategy for deviously altering a text without actually erasing or rewriting it. But he can't admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.
Interpretation (n.) is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities.
Interpretation (n.) itself must be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts it is a liberating act, in others it is reactionary, cowardly and stifling.
Interpretation (n.) is the wrongheaded revenge of the intellect upon the world. It intends to impoverish and to deplete the world in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings' it is to turn the world into 'this world.
Interpretation (n.) is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.
Communism (n.) is fascism with a human face.