Erasure Quotes

“When I was on unemployment I was not ashamed of being a social outcast. Just furious. It’s the same thing for being a woman: I am not remotely ashamed of not being a hot sexy number but I am livid that—as a girl who doesn’t attract men—I am constantly made to feel as if I shouldn’t even be around.”
― Virginie Despentes

“Literature composed by women was stored not in books but in female bodies, living repositories of poetry and song. I have come across a line of argument in my reading, which posits that, due to the inherent fallibility of memory and the imperfect human vessels that held it, the Caoineadh cannot be considered a work of single authorship. Rather, the theory goes, it must be considered collage, or, perhaps, a folky reworking of older keens. This, to me --- in the brazen audacity of one positioned far from the tall walls of the university --- feels like a male assertion pressed upon a female text. After all, the etymology of the word ‘text’ lies in the Latin verb ‘texere’: to weave, to fuse, to braid. The Caoineadh form belongs to a literary genre worked and woven by women, entwining strands of female voices that were carried in female bodies, a phenomenon that seems to me cause for wonder and admiration, rather than suspicion of authorship.”
― Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat

“Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.”
― D.H. Lawrence, The Last Poems of D. H. Lawrence

“I keep a list as close as my phone, and draw a deep sense of satisfaction each time I strike a task from it. In such erasure lies joy. No matter how much I give of myself to household chores, each of the rooms under my control swiftly unravels itself again in my aftermath, as though a shadow hand were already beginning the unwritten lists of my tomorrows…”
― Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat

“In the meantime, a massive and frightening bleakness inside me kept expanding and rattling. Sometimes I wrote about it in my diary, sensing that if I didn’t somehow fill the hollowness, it would swallow my heart and spit out my core. Other times I wished for the emptiness to scrape me off, a permanent erasure.
I was terrified that I was supposed to be living and I wasn’t, that I must have some prospect and I didn’t.”
― Ava Homa, Daughters of Smoke and Fire

“There is a kinship, between the climate scientists and the epidemiologists and the scholars of authoritarian states. The people who research worst-case scenarios are stuck breaking bad news while protectors of profit margins and purveyors of institutionalist mythologies market false assurances. The later remain successful not in spite of evidence, but to spite the evidence.”
― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

“Tholukuthi through these tales we learned there were in fact many untold narratives that were left out of the Seat of Power's tales of the nation, that were excluded from Jidada's great books of history. That the nation's stories of glory were far from being the whole truth, and that sometimes the Seat of Power's truths were actually half-truths and mistruths as well as deliberate erasures. Which in turn made us understand the importance not only of narrating our own stories, our own truths, but of writing them down as well so they were not taken from us, never altered, tholukuthi never erased, never forgotten.”
― NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory

“Liberation is not just about movement from one place to another, but especially about how Exodus’ multiple movements become mechanisms for bringing liberation to the material and ideological structures of oppression in Egypt, the Wilderness, the Mountain, and beyond. The catalyst for exodus liberation movement (“let my people go”) serves a larger goal: “let my people live” —the hermeneutical and material transition from erased, marginalized, and singularized existence to creative freedom, wholeness, and community that enshrines the full flourishing of the material and interpretive soul/life.”
― Kenneth N Ngwa, Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus

“Cute is the worst way to be. Cute is an act of erasure. Cute is gynophobia writ large.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus

“The condition of being alienated and "othered" reflects the ways in which navigating Western societies as a Black person is an endlessly unsettling experience, something that might be ripped whole from the pages of a speculative novel. Because of this, the search for lost cultural touchstones is a gesture towards survival: it is an Afrofuturistic act. At its heart it is the creation of a possible future based on a reconstructed, or reimagined past. In this way, a ware is wages against erasure.”
― Esi Edugyan, Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling

“So much of this story is about power and how it shapes our knowledge of the environment. By not trusting someone because of their gender, race, age, or class, we lose crucial information. We erase their contributions and discount their observations. Margaretta's and Elizabeth's respective lives and work illuminate the frustrating hurdles they faced as women, despite the privileges afforded to them by their wealth and race. The [Morris] sisters developed strategies and methods to counter the distrust, the exclusion, even the attacks. Despite all of that, they have been erased from the historical narrative. They have been forgotten.”
― Catherine McNeur, Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science

“We all say "sunrise" and "sunset" despite the fact that we all also know that the sun isn't rising or setting. Language and labels are fluid. So while we need to resist the impulse to put people in boxes, we shouldn’t negate the value of labels, especially where dominant labels too often seem to erase the identities and experiences of the non-dominant.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“My great-grandfather survived the Sand Creek Massacre, and his son survived boarding schools, and his daughter, my mother, survived losing her mother and being raised by white people. And still brought us up knowing who we were. Who we are. Somehow. So why had I been sheltering the boys from their culture? Something made so strong it survived more than it should have survived. It was more than survival. The culture sings. The culture dances. The culture keeps telling stories that bring you into them, take you away from your life and bring you back better made.”
― Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

“She wasn’t a protagonist. She wasn’t even a side character. She was a filler. A backdrop with blood and breath and no arc.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“The universe had no voice. Only script. But June had a voice. Cracked. Small. Raw. But hers.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“Some people were written in ink. They could not be erased. But I was pencil. And now, I’m the one holding the eraser.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“Luck is what decides whose name gets written in gold, and whose page is torn out before it begins.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“The story didn’t want to kill her. It wanted to write her in. To tame her. To turn her rebellion into a lesson.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“Somewhere very far from here, a blank page waits again. But this time, it’s not for a protagonist. It’s for the NPCs.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, The NPC Versus The Universe: A Metafictional Dystopian Thriller About Rigged Lives, Luck Privilege, and the NPC Who Starts Killing the Protagonists

“The vatican, british empire, and uncle sam, these three are the apex predator of planet earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“The Unholy Trinity (Naskaristana 2533)

History of the world written by colonizers
is no different from map of the world
made by flat earthers -

just like flat earthers flatten the globe
to fit their delusion, colonizers flatten
civilizations into savages,
philosophies into myths,
cosmologies into coincidences,
lived holiness into paganism,

erasure into expansion,
trafficking into trade,
native resistance into terrorism,
and colonial terrorism into civilizing.

The vatican, british empire, and uncle sam,
these three are the apex predator of planet earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“History of the world written by colonizers is no different from map of the world made by flat earthers - just like flat earthers flatten the globe to fit their delusion, colonizers flatten civilizations into savages, philosophies into myths, cosmologies into coincidences, lived holiness into paganism, erasure into expansion, trafficking into trade, native resistance into terrorism, and colonial terrorism into civilizing.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Vatican, british empire, and uncle sam, the unholy trinity of planet earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Letter to The Braindead (Naskaristana 2532)

The only reason the west makes such
a song and dance about antisemitism,
is not because it's a human rights issue,
but because it's the only narrative where
the colonizers emerge as the good guys -

but place indigenous populations
at the center of history, and every last
white heroic propaganda collapses in dust.

Think about it for a while, if you're not braindead -
how come french resistance, polish resistance, all
belong to history's mainstream fight against tyranny,
yet you still stutter to call the pilgrims as parasites,
british monarchy as brutes, and the vatican as vultures!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“The only reason the west makes such a song and dance about antisemitism, is not because it's a human rights issue, but because it's the only narrative where the colonizers emerge as the good guys - but place indigenous populations at the center of history, and every last white heroic propaganda collapses in dust.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“How come french resistance, polish resistance, all belong to history's mainstream fight against tyranny, yet you still stutter to call the pilgrims as parasites, british monarchy as brutes, and the vatican as vultures!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Everything that white people have ever written consists of only 1 percent of the human condition, yet you confuse it as the entire human condition.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Silence did not mean safety. It only meant no one was listening.”
― Kimberly K. Taylor

“Only Backward Minority of Earth
(Naskaristana 2543)

Eurocentrism is the biggest fraud in education,
eurocentrism is the antithesis of education.

The only minority that has historically caused
irreparable damage to the world are the white people,
yet you confuse every little mediocre literature
from such backward population as default knowledge -
and by act of conscience if a braveheart white defies
the status quo, you declare them as woke infected.

First sign of an educated mind -
you don't start a conversation
on philosophy mentioning greeks,
you don't start a conversation
on poetry mentioning the english.

White people discovered nothing but other people's land,
other people's science, other people's philosophy -
Europe is the real footnote in the history of knowledge,
till you understand what this means in your bones,
your philosophy is just as fictional as your theology.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“The only minority that has historically caused irreparable damage to the world are the white people.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot