Re: [-empyre-] Michele on Bare Life and Exposure

["Ana Valdes" <agora158@gmail.com>]

Dear Empyre! I has been lurking for a while and I has not been
participating very actively, I guess, for not having English as mother
language and feel my intents to express myself or my ideas can be made
in a poorer way through English.
I am a writer and cultural activist, born in South America but living
in Sweden since 28 years back.
My mother language is Spanish and now it's Swedish which is my best language.
Michele White's excellent text triggered in me an answer, most based
on the use of Giorgio Agamben. I am working with Agamben on the issues
of memory and reparative justice, the idea of the people who survived
Auschwitz as "witness", with the responsability of carry testimony on
what happened to them and to their fellow prisoners.
I was in a prison as political prisoner during four years and it's
still the fact which most distinctely made me reflect upon life and
existens, two quite different issues.
We merely lived during the time of the prison, our most elementary
needs were covered, we got food but it was often not edible, we slept
but always with lights on and the constant interruptions of soldiers
with gunmachines going berserk in our dorms and throwing away our
blankets.
We were not allowed to have books or newspapers or radio or
television, we were forced to work in the fields with dogs and patrols
watching us, we were tortured and humilliated.
But, did we exist or did we only live?
For me, and more clearly after these experience, to live is to be able
to full participate in society, with all your rights, the right to
exerce your citizenship (as Saskia Sassen and Will Kymlicka state it
in their essays about multicultural citizenship) and most important of
all, the right to dissent.
To me the right to dissent is the only one which is inalienable.
Ana