The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 205MORE THAN ADMINISTRATIVELY CREATED “FOREIGNERS”2054. The construction of national identity and the administrativeremoval of the OtherThat was when I started to, in order to adapt to the situation which I didn’t like.To me, this situation, that I was declared a foreigner in my own country, I didn’tlike it, but I had to swallow it. (Tomislav, 59)The extended analysis of nationalism in connection with the erasure servesto emphasize that differentiation based on ethnicity is not a product of the lasttwenty years, thus not something that emerged in 1991 with Slovenia’s indepen -dence; yet what is important is that after 1991 it became part of state practices.Slovenian national identity had been shaped through the Slovenian nationalmovement of the 19 th century, long before Slovenia became a sovereign state. Itprovided an invaluable groundwork without which Slovenia would probably notexist today, or it would be a completely different country. To think about Sloveniadisregarding “Slovenianness” and Slovenian nationalism is therefore impossible,yet owing to the “invisibility” of everyday “nationalizing” practices, nationalism isnonetheless frequently viewed exclusively through the prism of xenophobic andchauvinist excesses. Therefore, for our understanding of the erasure, reflectingon important questions, such as the discussions on Slovenian citizenship thatwere held in the early 1990s (see Zorn 2007, 2009), is as important as explainingthe issue of national identity as an indispensable part of nationalistic practicesof banal nationalism (see Billig 1995). In other words, the line dividing the “allies”and the “enemies” of the erased, or our understanding of the erasure and ourattitude towards the erased people also defines, after all, the identity of each ofus and our perception of “Slovenianness” and Slovenia as a state. The erasureholds up a mirror to the “Slovenian nation” and the state of Slovenia, and thetask of each individual is to reflect on his/her own location vis-a-vis both poles ofbelonging. Only the recognition that the blame lies not with the erased peoplebut with the state (both its political elites and its administrative apparatus), andthat it is not important who the erased individuals are, since what is involved is aprinciple of exclusion that should be invariably and a priori opposed, empowersus to deliberate on our own national identity and belonging. And only on this basisis it possible to overcome the entrapment in the nationalist notion of “us” andunderstand how and why the Other is being constructed. The notion of the Otheris inseparable from the concept of national identity, which acquires meaning onlywhen confronted with the Other because the sense of belonging is relative. 23 It23 This applies primarily to important Others, who can be either internal or external Others (for more on this, see Triandafyllidou1998). The erased people furnish an interesting example of the transformation from the internal to the externalOther. As permanent residents of Slovenia born in other republics of the former Yugoslavia, they first constitutedsymbolic internal non-members (although as Yugoslav citizens they were legally equated with Slovenians). The erasureturned them into the external Other, although many continued to live within the borders of the newly formed nationstateof Slovenia, which treated them as external non-members. The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the emergence ofnew nation-states brought about the transformation of former compatriots into “foreigners.” These new relations werefurther exacerbated when Slovenia joined the EU and the Schengen area, which introduced still another distinctionbetween members (Slovenian citizens) and non-members (citizens of “third countries”).