Elena Pečarič

The Freedom of Breathing

The Freedom of Breathing is based on the author’s intimate experience during her hospital treatment of lung deficiency. Shortly after graduation her lungs failed, and she found herself on the verge of death. At the hospital, she was put on a ventilator and cannulated. This autobiographical snippet is the basis for Elena’s reflection on the medical approach to human being, the functioning of institutions, the importance of friendship, and people’s self-empowerment. Elena sets breathing as a metaphor for human freedom and the state of the society, thus resonating with George Floyd’s last words “I can’t breathe” and all its symbolic implications, as well as with the covid pandemic. The Freedom of Breathing is an eloquent, topical, and globally important work.
Rights sold to Great Britain. Full English translation available upon request.

Elena Pečarič

Elena Pečarič (1971) graduated in philosophy and sociology of culture at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. Since the 1990s, she has been an activist for the equal rights for disabled people and their deinstitutionalized treatment. In the 1990s she founded YHD (Society for the Theory and Culture of Handicap), which was the main driving force in the multi-year campaign for the Personal Assistant Act Her candidacy for the President of the Republic of Slovenia in 2007 increased the visibility of disabled people.