The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 272272 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREduring the time not meant to be theirs; for them, nights were meant to be a periodof rest and preparation for physical work, not intended for contemplation.Or, as Rancière argued, “Politics begins precisely when they who have ‘no time’to do anything else other than their work take the time that they have not in orderto make themselves visible as sharing in a communal world and prove that theirmouths indeed emit shared language, instead of merely voicing pleasure or pain”(Rancière 2004b, 10).In the same way, the erased people appropriated words. Defying any stateand institutional logic – note that the state erased them and they were thereforenot supposed to exist – they unexpectedly became visible and omnipresent insteadof disappearing. They took to the streets. They drew attention to their bo -dies, physical presence and existence. They opened up public discourse. Theywere talked about, written about and discussed. They triggered public debate.Instead of being zero, of becoming an emptiness and negation, or ceasing toexist, as the state wanted them to do, they suddenly numbered 18,305, andthen more than 20,000, and even much much more, if we count their supporters– they have become an innumerable mass. Like Rancière’s “part of those whohave no part,” through their actions they usurped public space and public discoursethat were not meant to be theirs. In this way, they first regained the statusof human subject (zōē) and then that of political subject (bios). By de-identifyingthemselves as humans, they consolidated their human identity. By emphasizingthat they were erased, they ceased to be erased people and, on the contrary,became visible.In the beginning I didn’t know what it was all about. … I didn’t know, but then Iwas happy. When I read the newspapers and see my photo and your photo I takeit to the bars and show it around – look at it! When I saw that book about theerased people and when I saw my photo, I took it to the bar immediately … “Lookat it,” I said, “where the Activist is.” I’m not afraid of anybody, I’m even morehappy when they see me on the street and say “the erased one.” (Aktivist, 45)As Andrej Kurnik emphasized, in addition to the organized protagonism ofthe erased people, what is even more important to mention is the non-organizedprotagonism “in the form of individual and collective stance, that is, their pride”(2007, 125). An important component of erased people’s emancipation is collaborationwith their supporters, who have stood by their side since the very beginning.This indicates that a specific group of people has been capable ofsubmitting itself to emancipation in Rancièr’s sense of the word. According toRancière, emancipation is a process of political subjectivization par excellence,a process of formation of a person that is not a self but is the relation of a selfto an other. In other words, “a process of subjectivizaton is a process of disidentificationor declassification” (1995, 67). This process of political sujectivizationas disidentification and declassification is a denial of every constitution of identityor identification. It is the enactment of equality, “by crossing of identities, re-