The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 206206 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREis not that members of a specific nation are similar to each other; what mattersis that they feel closer to each other than they do to the Other. National identityin itself has no meaning, but it acquires one when a nation is confronted withother nations. The burden of responsibility for the erasure therefore lies with allof us, even though we did not take part in it directly. By not reflecting on our ownnational “belonging,” we, as citizens of the state that performed the erasure, enabledthe erasure and then failed to react to it.The suffusion of Slovenian national identity with the ethnic dimension andthe idea that one is “born into the Slovenian nation” has been normalized for“Slovenians” as something naturally given. 24 Despite formal proclamations ofSlovenia being a democratic and plural society in which many cultures, languagesand identities coexist, it promotes its national identity through the prism of themajority Slovenian nation. That is to say, not the nation as a collective of indivi -duals based on a nexus of civic identity and affiliation to the Republic of Slovenia,but the nation as an imagined community of people connected through invisibleties of alleged ancestry, common history, collective memories, myths and symbols.The schizophrenic nature of Slovenian nationalism lies precisely in the factthat, although all essential elements of Slovenian national identity can be “acquired”(language is the best example), meaning that in their essence they arepotentially civic in nature, “foreigners” are nevertheless never truly recognized as“true Slovenians,” because the idea of Slovenianness is still archaically ethnic. 25Therefore, even those erased people who have expressed their attachment toSlovenia are not perceived as members of the Slovenian nation, even though attachmentis one of the crucial components of subjective definitions of a nation,in which belonging is based on the principle of electivity and implies solidarity,loyalty, a kind of everyday plebiscite (Renan 1994) or a consensus on belongingto a specific national identity. Attachment to a nation can manifest itself in quitebanal ways, such as television watching with a kind of nostalgia, as one of the interviewederased persons who had to leave Slovenia explained:Down there I watched [television] Slovenia non-stop [...] We received the signal,Slovenia 1, 2, A kanal and a certain Vaš kanal Novo mesto. I watched it, thosefour channels. There was a match played between Bosnia and I don’t know who,and there was a match in Slovenia too at the same time. I watched Slovenia, I24 I put the term “Slovenians” in quotation marks to draw attention to the construction of a collective identity for “members”of the Slovenian nation. Our denoting of a specific group of people as Slovenians does not imply that we automaticallysubscribe to the understanding of the nation as an unchangeable historical community. It rather signifiesthe “common sense,” realistic understanding that there exists a distinct Slovenian nation that is separate from othernations. Although the term Slovenians could denote or, preferably, should denote, all citizens (if not all residents) ofSlovenia, reality is different. Its meaning stems from the ethnic understanding of the nation, or narod, so it denotesonly those citizens who, in accordance with the ethnic and cultural criteria within the nationalist understanding, whateverthese are, fit into the definition of the “members” of a nation. For more on how public opinion surveys reflect theunderstanding of who “true Slovenians” are, see Bajt (2005).25 I put the term “foreigners” in quotation marks to emphasize a special usage of this notion often found in public discourse.Tonči Kuzmanič drew attention to this (1999, 34) when he said that the term “foreigners” denoted primarily“undesired citizens from former Yugoslavia. Otherwise, the term foreigner used in connection with e.g. Germans, Austrians,English etc., has only country connotations, and not social, cultural or ethnic.” The latter definitely applies tothe erased people.