COVID as Metaphor: Reconsidering Susan Sontag and the Real of the Pandemic 

Nancy Kates, MFA, Discussant Deborah Melman, PhD, Moderator Reyna Cowan, PsyD, LCSW

Friday November 13, 6:30-8:30 PM

The pandemic, the threat of prolonged and incapacitating illness and potential death, leaves us without language. Our patients grasp for words to capture the terror and fear of being or knowing someone who may be the next victim. This panic, uncertainty and all that is upended, challenge both the patient and the analyst to manage the unmanageable. We also are confronted with our own intense fear: our patient’s projections, the bombardment of daily news, the “apocalyptic” sky, the closing of businesses, and our unjust racist society. Authors, fiction and non-fiction alike, have offered ways of thinking about and managing unbearable states. In Illness as Metaphor and later in AIDS as Metaphor, Susan Sontag probed the multifaceted issues. How does Sontag posit the questions of illness? How can we use her thinking to engage with questions of illness and deficit? How do we process without blaming while remaining open to communication and curiosity? Filmmaker Nancy Kates in her documentary, Regarding Susan Sontag focused on the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought. Using excerpts from the film, interviews, and discussion with Kates, we will engage with the multiplicities of COVID: illness; racism, inequity, fear and self or state-based limitations.