Department of English

This thesis contends with two sets of concerns regarding Susan Sontag’s 1978 Illness as Metaphor. First, this thesis situates Illness as Metaphor within the disability studies canon through recourse to the works of established scholars in the field. I suggest that Sontag’s interrogation of figurative language about illness can be aligned with the ideological aims of the social model of disability; her intention is emancipatory. Through examining representations of illness and ill identity in literature, Sontag hopes to liberate her readers from stigma that is perpetuated by the rhetoric used to describe illness. I argue that Sontag’s advocacy for medical intervention in the lives of the chronically ill does not compromise her project of evidencing the social construction of the ill experience. I explicate the relationships between chronic illness, impairment, and disability to contextualize Sontag within disability studies discourses, introducing an embodiment perspective. Second, this thesis probes Sontag’s invocation of diagnosis as the most objective way of conceiving of illness. I submit that diagnosis is metaphorical, positioning it as a synecdochic practice that relies on abductive reasoning to conceptualize disparate bodily processes as a singular entity, disease. I further question the utility of metaphoric language in medical dialogues, refiguring Sontag’s stance on diagnosis and the truth of illness. This thesis uses Sontag to intervene in dominant disability studies discourses on working models, and this thesis further uses rhetorical analysis to intervene in Sontag’s relationship to medicine in Illness as Metaphor.