Notes On "Camp"by Susan Sontag
Published in 1964.
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they
have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility
-- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with
it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."
A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to
talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never
been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any
such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice
and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a
badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page
sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954),
it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is therefore to betray
it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it
provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves. For myself, I plead
the goal of self-edification, and the goad of a sharp conflict in my own
sensibility. I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended
by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who
wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only,
whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its
contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by
revulsion.
Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility
that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous -- these
are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm
of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious attractions, mainly
sensual, that have not been brought under the sovereignty of reason. They
allow that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people
and to works of art. But this attitude is naïve. And even worse. To patronize
the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every
free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is more decisive. There
is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in
acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste:
taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to
develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste
and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)
Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of
taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain
taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility
which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough
tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an
idea . . .
To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,
1 one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an
essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more
appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive
sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp.
One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.
Published in 1964.
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they
have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility
-- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with
it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."
A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to
talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never
been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any
such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice
and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a
badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page
sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954),
it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is therefore to betray
it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it
provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves. For myself, I plead
the goal of self-edification, and the goad of a sharp conflict in my own
sensibility. I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended
by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who
wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only,
whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its
contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by
revulsion.
Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility
that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous -- these
are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm
of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious attractions, mainly
sensual, that have not been brought under the sovereignty of reason. They
allow that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people
and to works of art. But this attitude is naïve. And even worse. To patronize
the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every
free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is more decisive. There
is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in
acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste:
taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to
develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste
and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)
Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of
taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain
taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility
which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough
tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an
idea . . .
To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,
1 one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an
essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more
appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive
sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp.
One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.
又长了见识！
了？我没有找到英语的，你不要骂我啊。
