The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 270270 THE SCARS OF THE ERASURErights. Those who are denied citizenship (foreign workers, asylum seekers, “illegalimmigrants” and in our case the erased people) point precisely to this emptysite where citizenship and nationality diverge. 12Balibar showed that this is a consequence of the colonial heritage: thecolonial subject was understood as a “national by birth,” while those who aredenied citizenship are not “nationals by birth,” and even when they are more orless integrated into society and partly included in the system of rights and dutiesderiving from the status of citizenship, they can never detach themselves fromminority status. They may be accorded training and protection, which makesthem similar to citizens, but only if they respect the provisions of a “contract”that they will never be able to negotiate for themselves (which is indicated bythe regulation of the issues of naturalization or the right to residence). So today,as Balibar argues, we face the true process of “recolonization of social circumstances”(ibid., 82), which began in the 1980s as a consequence of the globa -lization of the economy and new inequalities on both the global and local(national) levels. Balibar does not hesitate to name this phenomenon Europeanapartheid, or neo-racism. It is therefore the philosophical rehabilitation of a specifichistorical phenomenon (cf. ibid., 85 and also Bajt in this volume).For this reason, the rebellion and struggle of non-citizens themselves andtheir demands for active political participation represent a live paradigm of emancipatorypolitics. This is clearly confirmed by the movement of the erased people,composed of the erased individuals themselves and their collaborators. Theyhave contributed to the concept of active citizenship in such a way that, throughthe forms and content of their actions, they encourage activist solidarity, whichdespite understandable fluctuations between mobilization and hopelessness, enthusiasmand conflict, shows a surprising continuity in the long run. Their activityis therefore also valuable as an encouragement of civil disobedience which, alongwith the risks involved, is the key component of citizenship and helps its re-establishmentat a time of crisis or when its principles are challenged.4. A demand for true equality: emancipation as politicalsubjectivizationThis kind of emancipation is naturally aimed at true equality (cf. Rancière1999 and 1991) among people, or individuals, who see each other as intelligentbeings. “The philosophers’ paralogism is to assume a people like man.But this is a contradictory expression, an impossible being. There are only peoplesof citizens, people who have given up their reason to the inegalitarian fiction(Rancière 1991, 90). Therefore, a social order that rejects the principle of12 For the “living on the border” phenomenon, i.e. the borders between man and citizen, borders that have been openingup for capital and goods but remain closed for people, and borders between equality and inequality on which postneo-liberalsociety rests, cf. Zdravković 2006.