The Feminist Legacy of Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was a prominent female critic and intellectual of the twentieth century.  Sontag’s work, made up of several essays along with a handful of fictional writings, explores a wide breadth of topics that resonate with her, including meditations on art, literature, illness, and political movements.  Despite the cultural and intellectual prominence she obtained, her work has largely been left unanalyzed in the academic circles.  This is especially true among feminist critics, where Sontag’s work is either excluded or viewed contemptuously. The aim of this paper is to investigate the meaning and origins of this exclusion, and attempt to assess the feminist implications of Sontag’s work, both in the context of when they were written and its relevance today.