The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 258258 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREco-creates his/her identity and proves it in socio-political, official and legal contexts,is destroyed in front of his/her eyes? What can such a person do, one whohas been expelled from the official, legal and socio-political system of a countryand has all of a sudden become just a “human being”?Hannah Arendt described very well (cf. 2003) what happens when a personloses all national or citizen attributes and becomes only a “human being” (Agamben’shomo sacer). 1 This is what happened to the erased people of Slovenia. Astheir designation, “the erased,” illustrates, accurately and chillingly, these peoplesimply do not exist in the reality of a certain community. In consequence, theyare also erased from the universal field of human rights. As Arendt (ibid.) emphasized– and her understanding stems from her wider understanding of politicsas a public sphere which emerges and is repeatedly re-established throughvarious interpersonal relationships – such situations bring to light the fascinatingfact that there is an abyss between universal human rights applying to everyone,as stated in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights whose subject par excellenceshould be people “as such,” and national or citizen rights arising fromformal belonging to a specific nation-state. Human rights here appears as a pa -radoxical concept, since they do not apply universally but are always, and aboveall, predicated on belonging to a nation-state, or a “national substance.”In such a constellation, people deprived of national or citizen attributes aredeprived of human attributes and dehumanized in the extreme. As Arendtshowed (ibid.), in the legal sphere it has always been held that sovereignty ismost absolutely expressed in connection with various kinds and methods of dehumanization:migration, asylum, naturalization or expulsions. In such situations,people become “bare human beings” without other attributes; they become people“as such.” In this connection, Arendt drew attention to the problem and impossibilityof realizing the concept of human rights if a person has no citizenstatus in some sovereign (nation) state, or has lost the support and protectionof his/her government. The paradox manifests itself in the fact that a personloses all human rights the moment he/she becomes “just a human being:” theloss of citizen rights therefore entails a de facto loss of human rights. A refugee,a migrant or other person without citizenship who should be the subject ofhuman rights par excellence – and these are the only rights to which such a personcan refer at all – reveals the radical crisis within this concept. 2 Arendt also1 In Roman law, homo sacer was a man whom anyone could kill without guilt – a social outcast expelled from civillaw. Giorgio Agamben (cf. 2004) developed a philosophical concept based on this notion, in which modern man incontemporary society is a homo sacer, an individual who is expelled from law. In his opinion, it is a paradox of modernsociety – thanks to laws, a society can recognize an individual as being a homo sacer, while on the other hand, it isthese same laws – those which make exclusion possible – that ascribe identity to an individual. For Agamben, thereare two aspects of life: one is natural life (Greek zōē) and the other is political life (Greek bios). The homo sacer effectis precisely the split between the natural and the political lives of man. Having only “bare life,” homo sacer is subjectedto the sovereign’s will of a “state of exception,” and although he has natural, biological life, he has no political life orsignificance. This means that decisions about his own life and death are not in his hands but in the hands of the sove -reign. Therefore, for Agamben, a necessary element in any emancipation process is the destruction of sovereignty.2 For a consideration of the erasure through the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, as a syndrome of “organized innocence,”or a symptom of “tribal, nationalistic and racist dehumanization within the framework of ‘demographic politics’ of nation-state,”cf. Jalušič 2003 and Jalušič 2007.