I, etcetera

I said earlier that the task of the writer is to pay attention to the world, but obviously I think that the task of the writer, as I conceive of it for myself, is also to be in an aggressive and adversarial relationship to falsehoods of all kinds... and, once again, knowing perfectly well that this is an endless task, since you’re never going to end falsehood or false consciousness or systems of interpretation. But there should always be some people in any generation who are attacking these things, and that’s what disturbs me so much about most places in the world where the only criticism of society comes from the state itself. I think there should always be freelance people who, however quixotic it may be, are trying to lop off a couple of more heads, trying to destroy hallucination and falsehood and demagogy — and making things more complicated, because there’s an inevitable drift towards making things more simple. But for me, the most awful thing would be to feel that I’d agree with the things I’ve already said and written — that is what would make me most uncomfortable because that would mean that I had stopped thinking.

Susan Sontag | 1979