Frases de Michael Ignatieff
Michael Ignatieff
Fecha de nacimiento: 12. Mayo 1947
Michael Grant Ignatieff , CPRC es un escritor, académico y expolítico canadiense. Fue el líder del Partido Liberal de Canadá y de la Oposición Oficial desde 2008 hasta 2011. Conocido por su obra como historiador, Ignatieff ha ocupado puestos académicos en la Universidad de Cambridge, la Universidad de Oxford, la Universidad Harvard y la Universidad de Toronto.
Entre 1978 y 2000, cuando vivía en el Reino Unido, Ignatieff adquirió fama como presentador de radio y televisión y como columnista editorial para The Observer. Su serie documental Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism fue emitida en la BBC en 1993, y le valió un Premio Gemini canadiense. Su libro homónimo, basado en la serie, obtuvo el premio Gordon Montador en la categoría de "Mejor libro canadiense sobre problemáticas sociales" y el premio Lionel Gelber, otorgado por la Universidad de Toronto.[1] Sus memorias, The Russian Album, ganaron el Premio Literario del Gobernador General en Canadá y en premio Heinemann de la Royal Society of Literature en Gran Bretaña en 1988. Su novela Scar Tissue fue seleccionada para el Premio Booker en 1994. En el año 2000, llevó a cabo las Conferencias Massey, tituladas The Rights Revolution, que más adelante en ese mismo año serían publicadas.
En las elecciones federales de 2006, Ignatieff fue elegido para la Cámara de los Comunes como Miembro del Parlamento para Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Ese mismo año, se postuló para líder del Partido Liberal, pero fue vencido por Stéphane Dion. Se desempeñó como diputado del partido bajo las órdenes de Dion, y, luego de la renuncia de éste en las elecciones de 2008, Ignatieff fue líder interino desde noviembre hasta que finalmente fue electo líder en mayo de 2009.[2] En las elecciones federales de 2011, Ignatieff perdió su banca en la peor elección de la historia del Partido Liberal. Con sólo treinta y cuatro escaños, el partido obtuvo un distante tercer lugar detrás de los Conservadores y el Nuevo Partido Democrático, y por lo tanto perdió su posición como Oposición Oficial.[3] El 3 de mayo de 2011, Ignatieff anunció que renunciaría como líder del Partido Liberal, dejando pendiente la selección de un líder interino;[4][5] su renuncia se hizo efectiva el 25 de mayo de 2011.
Después de su derrota electoral, Ignatieff aceptó una posición como residente senior en el Massey College de la Universidad de Toronto, donde a 2011 enseña leyes y ciencia política.[6]
Frases Michael Ignatieff
„... our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.“
— Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry
„I do not know whether it is an act of faithfulness to her or a betrayal of the dignity she never lost, to say that she had bitten her tongue, to say that there was blood flowing across her mouth and lips which my brother kept wiping away. I do not know whether I have the right to say, though I will do so, that her body was shaken with epileptic tremors and that she took enormous, terrifying breaths that went on and on until you could not believe she had the strength for them. I do not know whether, as we thought at the time, she could feel our hands on her forehead and cheek, or whether she had waited until we were both there to die.
I did not say 'I am here'. I did not say anything. Her mouth was open wide, as in those portraits by Francis Bacon of caged prisoners in their final extremity. I watched and listened to those terrifying, rattling, hoarse breaths, wondering at the strength remaining in her aged body and at the violence it still had to endure. I looked over at my brother as if he might know, as if he might understand whether she had the strength to continue. He was stroking her forehead, whispering soundlessly to her, attempting even at this moment to reach behind the veil and find her.
If you believe that she knew we were there, if you believe--I cannot be sure--that she understood what her sons needed at that instant, her eyes which had been shut and which, by being closed, made her seem completely out of our reach, suddenly opened. Blue-grey eyes, staring up into the ceiling above her sons' heads, upwards, ever upwards, fixed like an exhausted swimmer on the shore. Then her eyes closed and she took the largest, most violent breath of all, and we watched and waited, stood and looked at each other, felt for her pulse and slowly, as seconds turned into minutes, realized that she would never breathe again.
There is only one reason to tell you this, to present the scene. It is to say that what happens can never be anticipated. What happens escapes anything you can ever say about it. What happens cannot be redeemed. It can never be anything other than what it is. We tell stories as if to refuse this truth, as if to say that we make our fate, rather than simply endure it. But in truth we make nothing. We live, and we cannot shape life. It is much too great for us, too great for any words. A writer must refuse to believe this, must believe there is nothing that cannot somehow be said. Yet there at last in her presence, in the unending unfolding of that silence, which still goes on, which I still expect to be broken by another drawing in of breath, I knew that all my words could only be in vain, and that all that I had feared and all that I had anticipated could only be lived--without their help or hers.“
— Michael Ignatieff, Scar Tissue
„I admit I must have been impossible to live with. It was the self-righteousness of the grieving--my idea that I would betray him if I carried on as before, if I went through the motions of living--that must have driven my family apart from me. I still do not understand those instincts that lead you to flee the ones who want to help you, that lead you to take revenge upon them for a sorrow that is not their fault.“
— Michael Ignatieff, Scar Tissue
