スーザン・ソンタグ（1933–2004年）は、アメリカの評論家、エッセイスト、小説家。文学、写真、映画、病気、戦争などを題材に、文化が人間の経験をどのように形づくるかを問い続けた。『反解釈』（Against Interpretation and Other Essays）では、作品を意味に還元せず感覚的に経験する読みを提唱し、『写真論』（On Photography）では、写真が現実の見方や記憶の形成に及ぼす影響を論じた。『隠喩としての病い』（Illness as Metaphor）では、病気に道徳的な意味を負わせる社会の言葉を批判。小説『アメリカ』（In America）は、19世紀の女優が新天地で自己を作り直す物語で、2000年の全米図書賞を受賞した。戦争や人権をめぐる発言と行動でも知られ、知識人の公共的な役割を実践した。
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was an American critic, essayist, novelist, and public intellectual. She wrote about literature, photography, film, illness, war, and human rights, asking how culture shapes the way people experience the world. In “Against Interpretation and Other Essays,” she challenged readings that reduced art to fixed meanings and called for a more sensuous engagement with works. “On Photography” examined how photographs influence perception, memory, and the collection of reality, while “Illness as Metaphor” criticized the moral and psychological meanings imposed on disease. Her novel “In America,” about a nineteenth-century actress who reinvents herself in the United States, won the 2000 National Book Award for Fiction. Sontag also took an active public stance on war, censorship, and human rights.
