The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 274274 THE SCARS OF THE ERASURElogic of “their” state, the state of Slovenia. The slogan “You have the power, wehave the erased people” which has accompanied this struggle for years, demonstratesthe capacity of a certain group of people to de-identify as Slovenes andidentify with the erased people. In much the same way, the erased people wereforced to de-identify as human beings so that they could again become humanbeings through struggle for the status of “citizenship in the making.” In this way,they together initiated the process of political subjectivization which “redefinesthe field of experience that gave to each their identity with their lot” (ibid., 40).They constituted themselves as those who suffered injustice and in the nameof that injustice.According to Rancière, a political subject always constitutes itself as thesubject of injustice; an injustice suffered is a prerequisite for the constitution ofa political subject. In the case of the erased people, this fundamental injusticewas the erasure, depriving them of fundamental rights or the right to residence(or, in Balibar’s sense, of citizenship). But as Rancière argues, such a politicalsubject which is necessarily established through the image of an injustice, doesnot identify with its suffering and is not a victim. It ceases to be a victim at theprecise moment it recognizes itself as a victim, the moment it recognizes that ithas suffered injustice and becomes determined to do something about it. As aresult, the “justice” that is demanded is not an illusionary attribute of an idealsubject, but is the argument of some injustice (ibid., 107). In the name of suchan injustice, the erased people constituted themselves as a political subject, asRancière’s “part of those who have no part;” they emancipated themselves. Theybecame emancipated along with their supporters, collaborators and domesticand international activists, who put the erasure into a broader social context.Through this process of polemics, interactive and solidarity action, both sidesgained emancipatory potential, which was reflected as the joint demand forglobal radical equality. In this way, they succeeded jointly in achieving one ofRancière’s most important demands, i.e., the creation of a political space whichalso engages their opponents, their haters, even though they do not want to beincluded and although they fight against them.This kind of joint action of activists which encourages the “part of thosewho have no part” to take concrete action (to emancipate themselves), and ofwhich they are part themselves (becoming emancipated themselves in this way),is a valuable activity on the micro level that carries with it the potential to becomea global action and liberate society from the fear of the political, public action,which everyone still fears, and justifiably: politicians as political technologists,academics as “objective” scientists, impotent (petty) bourgeois and, naturally,believers and theologians, i.e. the Church, not to mention society as a whole,which is based precisely on anti-politics. This kind of action, which primarily representsa radical demand for social and intellectual non-conformism, does notfight “against exclusion” on behalf of those who are excluded, but on the contrary,encourages their own emancipation. What is involved is not “enabling ac-