![]() True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned. After the reporter leaves, Saadawi tells me she is trying to convince the young woman to give up her scarf. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west.We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another.Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. The young reporter wears a head scarf, but Saadawi, a thrice-married secularist, lets her own chin-length white hair tumble freely in soft waves above her blue-striped button-down shirt. The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. For the technology of oppression and might without justice has become more advanced, and the fetters imposed on mind and body have become invisible. ![]() Now, although I am out of prison, I continue to live inside a prison of another sort, one without steel bars. It is based on the true-life story of a woman prisoner on death row that Saadawi met while conducting research at. “Writing: such has been my crime ever since I was a small child. Woman at Point Zero is a creative non-fiction by Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi. ![]()
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