Mit den Augen Susan Sontags: Metaphern im Umgang mit COVID-19

Metaphors play an important role in the experience, communication and management of diseases: They are a constitutive psychological tool in understanding complex issues and they influence the cognitive conceptual structures we use in order to interpret them. In her powerful essay “Illness as Metaphor” Susan Sontag reflects on the moral implications of an uncritical use of metaphors for diseases that may disgrace and stigmatise, and thus evoke additional burden, to sick persons. In the current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic, metaphors are used as means of explanation and interpretation, too. By adopting Sontag’s demystifying perspective, the essay raises the following questions: Which metaphors are used in the public media for describing Covid-19? Which underlying attitude towards health, illness and life is communicated through this use? Regarding a healthy, rational handling of Covid-19 as well as illness in general: What insights will remain if we dispel metaphors and their underlying modes of thinking?