Seeing Red

Sontag shakes up the left

Nothing provokes a brouhaha in the intellectual circles of the left like a stirring mea culpa from a compatriot who is audacious enough to denounce Communism. What usually happens next is a highbrow equivalent of mud wrestling, as colleagues question the defector's motivation and fire off gratuitous insults. In the eye of the latest tempest, which blew up in response to the suppression of freedom in Poland, is Social Critic Susan Sontag (Styles of Radical Will, On Photography), whose past essays have sung the praises of revolutionary movements from...

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