Erasers are quite wonderful and also scary when you think about their purpose, which is to remove something as if it was never there.

Another formulation: we use the eraser to return the paper to its original state of blankness.

Does the eraser precede and perhaps inspire the erasure of thoughts considered indecent, sacrilegious, traitorous? Or does the need to remove such thoughts lead to the invention of the eraser?

Even if the eraser is invented to remove mistakes, isn’t it inevitable it will inspire the thought to remove anything or anyone that can be described as a mistake?

Incidentally, this thought about erasure only pertains to paper, lead and rubber. Cuneiform tablets, could of course, be re-worked when wet simply by smoothing over the clay and writing again. Wax tablets also contain the function of erasure within them.

When engraving in stone, we rarely consider the erasure caused by water and time. When we think of civilization, we find it difficult to remember erased cities, peoples, histories. The evidence of their existence erased as if they never existed.