Re: [-empyre-] Bare Life, Homo Sacer Internet beheadings

[G.H.Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net>]

On Jul 16, 2006, at 2:14 PM, Ana Valdes wrote:

> The Christian fundamentalism, used in the colonization of the New
> World, South America, Asia and Africa, erased old cultures and burned
> on the stake priests and shamans. Old temples and shrines were put to
> fire and destroyed, in the old mosques Christian churches were
> builded.

gh responds:

All religions destroy the holy spots of the nations they conquer and 
build their temples on the same spot. Think about Istanbul and the 
Hagia Sophia which was the largest church in Christendom until the 
Turks overran Byzantium. The 80 year period of the Al Andalus was a 
very small part of the competing Moslem empires. An eighty year golden 
age in a 1300 year history of Moslem conquest and empires is not much 
to brag about.  You may be ashamed of your Christian heritage, but as 
an Armenian I can say that the Moslem Turks perpetrated the first 
modern genocide on the Armenian Christians. The Armenian Genocide 
became the inspiration for Hitlers' final solution for the Jews. Which 
brings us back to the discussion of Bare Life. From my perspective I 
grew up in an Armenian community where everyone had a story about the 
genocide. It was the collective mythos of the Armenian community. For 
instance my Grandmother was sent here in 1915 to escape the genocide. 
She was sent with her brother and an orphan from the village. They came 
in steerage to America. She was 15 years old. Her brother contracted an 
eye infection on the trip over which later left him blind. They were 
almost refused entry because of the infection. The Armenians are not 
any better having just recently started a war with Azerbaijan and 
pushed out all the Azeris from their homes in the Ngorno-Karabach 
region.