Turning Points
Author(s): Susan Sontag
Source: Irish Pages , Spring/Summer, 2003, Vol. 2, No. 1, Empire (Spring/Summer,
2003), pp. 186-191
Published by: Irish Pages LTD
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IRISH PAGES
TURNING POINTS
Hic clavis, alias porta.
(The key is here, the gate elsewhere.)
A speech given at the Commencement Exercises
at Vassar College, 25 May 2003
President Fergusson, faculty, trustees, students, parents and other f
members, friends of Vassar, and, above all, members of the Class of 200
This is a wonderful occasion, an occasion of joy. Graduation from col
is one of life's major turning points. There will be other turning points, bu
one has to feel awesome. Something large and complicated has been
accomplished. Something even larger and more complicated awaits -
other side of a great door that officially opens today.
On these occasions, it is the privilege of a few designated elders to b
you, or amuse you, or provoke you, with admonitions and wor
encouragement. But before I set out on my homiletic task, let me invok
joy. Again.
You have been receiving something called an education - a very l
concept indeed. It includes matters as varied as information, ways of thin
cultural references, skills of different kinds, pre-professional prepa
There is an idea of knowing. There is an idea of growing - aka growi
(But let me tell you a secret. Growing up is something you'll be doi
trying to do, all your life.) There is an idea of getting stronger, m
independent, clearer. There is an idea of being safe, protected, cosse
encouraged.
You will have learned something about the power of words, the power of
thinking. Your teachers, the best of them, will have been trying through the
medium of various "subjects" - to form your attention. The formation of
attention is the true definition of education - and, as Hannah Arendt once
observed - of culture itself.
Part of the formation of attention is the courtesy you extend to what is
different. The eagerness you have to receive new stimuli, and to be challenged.
That, too, is part of an education.
Of course, to be educated, specifically to go to a liberal arts culture
college, does not mean that one is automatically committed to the values of
respect and dignity, and a civilized approach to discourse and debate. A college
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IRISH PAGFS
is anything but an ivory tower, as I'm sure you know, and w
has to reflect what is going on throughout the society. Nobo
without also being "in" the society at large, as well as "in" our
and friends.
Nevertheless, some colleges try to offer a counterforce
bigotry and narrow-mindedness and bellicosity of the soc
Vassar, with its long traditions of intellectual distinction, an
to tolerance and intellectual openness, is surely one of th
certain "resistance" to conventional opinions is honored,
promulgated.
It is not always so in American campuses. Just last week,
a small liberal arts college eighty miles north of Chicago, Ro
commencement speaker was booed by a pack of student
speech, who then cut the electricity that powered the pod
and, ignoring the pleas of the college president to let the
stormed the stage and forced the speaker off. Chris Hedges i
commencement speaker who was not allowed to make h
former foreign correspondent at The New York Times, and I sp
in Sarajevo, where Chris was stationed for about a year and w
good part of the three years of the siege. We both know, at fi
is really like.
What did Chris Hedges say that turned a large number of college students
into a potential lynch mob? He said, for one thing, that war is an addiction.
He probably said, or was going to say, that the American inmasion and conquest
of Iraq - for that is how it should correctly be called (not: "the liberation of
Iraq" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "the campaign of the coalition of the
willing to disarm Iraq") - was illegitimate, and unwise. He probably said, or
was about to say, that the administration did not provide any credible evidence
of an imminent threat from Iraq to the United States before the invasion -
which may be explained, in the weeks since the conquest of this pitifully weak,
nearly destitute, fiendishly ruled country of 24 million people, by the
subsequent failure to find the fabled "weapons of mass destruction" that were,
if one was to believe the administration, poised with the nuclear tips or
chemical payload to strike at the American heartland.
He may have said these things. I don't know. It seems he did not get very
far, before the students started booing, and shouting "USA Number One" and
someone, a woman, according to the news report, began singing "God Bless
America!" as Chris tried, in vain, to go on speaking.
As I say, I don't know how far he got. I haven't been in touch with him. I
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IRISH PAGES
haven't read the speech he was prepared, but unable, to g
have gathered, from my rhetorical elaboration of what
position, that I am actually describing my own position. And
as I do, that such behavior is inconceivable at Vassar, and tha
use my allotted time for a commencement homily to den
Cheney-Rumsfeld administration and to express my con
United States is at a radical, a very radical, turning poi
moment when the Republic may have ended, and the Em
would hear me out, all of you, including those who do not th
As I've said, I haven't read Chris Hedges' speech, but I wou
I wouldn't find anything objectionable in it. So it's easy, m
condemn the behavior of the students at Rockford. But let's
harder for ourselves. Would there never be an occasion when
to register our disapproval of a speaker? No one, I would w
be driven off the stage at Vassar for opposing American bellic
someone took this platform and uttered stridently racist rem
recounted misogynistic anecdotes. What would we - you,
Should you not have opinions? Should you not care?
would you act on them. Boo? Sing? Stamp your feet? Turn
out? Cut the power and storm the stage?
Think about it. Do we care? Do we care? And what do we do when we
care? These are the old questions, the questions central to 19th century
Russian literature: How do we live? And: what is to be done?
One of the things you learn - you are supposed to learn - in college is the value
of doing something for itself. That is the meaning of a liberal arts education.
Yes, some of you were taking courses because you were preparing for a
professional career, but there was always the idea that you might take a course
just for the hell of it, because it was fun, or you were "interested" (a muddy
word if ever there was one).
In college, you are encouraged to respond to the value of doing
something for itself. And now you are going out into a world where this is not
the case, where all action becomes more instrumental, more calculating, more
practical. And mercenary.
If you continue to be a student, that is, go to a graduate or professional
school, your education will become more focused; you will be studying and
learning in order to prepare or qualify for a profession. If you leave here and
go directly to a job, you are expected to set your sights on what is practical.
What works.
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IRISH PAGES
Either way, you are not going to have the same incentive to
mind float, to follow your whim. Indeed, you will have powerfu
do just the opposite. The road to adult life and its responsibiliti
a sign that says: "Abandon all dreams, ye who enter here."
At least, that's the myth. That's what you've been told. That
dread.
Ambition may flourish. But certain kinds of energy die.
Going out into the world means not having enough time to d
"want to do" - "used to do" - that is, read, listen to music, have
Is this true?
I'm here to say: not necessarily.
Don't buy into the myth of age. Maybe you're doing now wh
college students ought to do, have a license to do. The myth of th
(reduced in our time to the notion of "decades" hey, now yo
your twenties!) - may seem to be on your side now. But it will
against you, as you get older.
Oh, I can't do that, or, I don't do that, you'll say as you near y
I wish I could. But I just don't have the time.
Don't believe it.
You can.
The most potent, the deepest form of censorship, in a society and in an
individual life, is seff-censorship.
Today is a great turning point for you. And the notion of turning points is a
useful one. It can give permission for new energies to be mobilized. It can also
mobilize the sense of loss ... a feeling of being thrust forw ard, of having to leave
behind something you'll never be able to duplicate in its feelings of warmth and
protected adventurousness.
You are going from a place college, this college, Vassar, where the best
is expected of you to a place - the world - where this is usually not the case.
Here are some pieces of advice:
- Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening
from a book. No book is worth reading once that isn't worth re-reading. If you
read right, you'll be doing a lot of re-reading all your life. (The same for
movies, by the way.)
- Try not to live in a linguistic slum.
-Try to imagine the concrete, lived reality that words point to. Words
like, for example, "war."
- Try not to think about yourself, or what you want, or need, or what
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IRISH P4GFS
disappoints you; try not to think of yourself at all at least h
- Get about. I mean this, literally. Travel.
Live in another country for a while. But travel, never st
if you can't get very far, then go deeper into places th
yourself. As the critic Denis Donoghue wrote, "If time is th
there is always place. Places make up for times, as a garden,
you feel that the past is no longer a burden."
- Commerce is the ruling activity and money-making th
in this society. Try keeping a place for ideas and practical act
ignore commerce. Each of us, if we so desire, can be, in som
a counterforce to what is shallow and heartless in the society
the attractive and the privileged which, as graduates of Vassa
Despise violence. Despise national vanity and self-love
Protect the territory of conscience.
- Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not
even further: try to imagine at once a day that you belo
overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don
don't live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and
have never even once flown in a plane.
- Be extremely skeptical of all claims made by your
Remember, it may not be the best thing for America or for
President of the United States to be the president of th
skeptical of other governments, too.
- It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid.
- It's good to laugh a lot, as long as it doesn't mean you're trying to kill
your feelings.
- Don't allow yourself to be patronized, condescended to - which, if you
are a woman, happens, and will continue to happen, all the time. Don't take
shit. Tell the bastards off.
Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or
society's kiss on your forehead.
- Try not to become someone you now, the you that's here today, would
be disappointed in. That's hard. Things aren't set up for you to do this without
a lot of vigilance and obstinacy. Nothing is easier than giving up or settling for
less, without meaning to give up or settle for less. Even the most beautifully
launched life can founder.
- Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. It's all about taking in as
much of what's out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the
dreariness of some of the obligations you'll soon be incurring narrow your lives.
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IRISH PAGI 5
- Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you ea
Stay eager.
You'll notice that I haven't talked about lorxe. Or about happiness. I've
talked about becoming or remaining the person who can be happy, a lot of
the time, without thinking that being happx is x hat it's all about. It's not. It's
about becoming the largest, most inclusixe, most responsive person x ou can be.
From two poems by Wallace Stexens, two visions of life. First, from a late
poem, "The Dwarf":
Now it is September and the web is w o en
The web is woven and you have to wear it.
It is all that you are, the final dx arf of you,
That is woven and woxen and waiting to be wvorn...
And this, from a late poem called "Architecture":
What manner of building shall we build?
In this house, what manner of utterance shall there be?
Remember: It's not September, it's May. Belie\e me, exerything is possible.
Don't let yourself down.
Congratulations on getting out of here. I l ish you more than one life, and
many passions, many turning points, in the years that lie before you.
Susan Sontag is an essajist, critic, scholar and novelist An important ioice In American letters
since the 1 960s, she is the author of I I books, including such classwic as Against Interpretation
and Other Essays (1968) and On Photography (1976) Her fourth novel, In America
(Farrar, Straus &Giroux), was published in 1999. She lives In Neu York Cit)
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