Representational Discourses on the Erased of Slovenia: From Human Rights to Humanitarian Victimization

In 1992, the Slovenian Ministry of Interior Affairs deprived 25,000 ex-Yugoslavians of their citizenship. This symbolic act of violence is the most severe symptom of the Slovenian transition towards democracy. Since 1995 this group of erased citizens is known as the Erased of Slovenia. This contribution is a critical analysis of political discourses on the issue of the Erased that appeared in the Slovenian printed press between 1995 and 2008. The presented qualitative analysis explores 312 units of op-ed articles, mainly commentaries and editorials, which have been selected on the basis of two keywords: erased, erasure. The contribution aims to show that the notion of the Erased functioned as the “nodal point” around which two antagonistic political discourses were formed. The aim of the analysis is to find out which empty or hegemonic signifiers are produced in this antagonistic relation and how this affects the political desubjectivation of the Erased. Keywords: discourse, the Erased, antagonism, hegemony