Abstract
In several novels from Europe and the US that address the climate of fear, crisis, Islamophobia, and terrorism in the post-9/11 era, the agents of violence are non-Western others living within or outside Western societies—terrorists, fundamentalists, migrants. This chapter traces a different trend in Dutch literature after 9/11: an engagement with forms of violence endemic in European societies or exercised by Western European subjects—predominantly frustrated, disillusioned white men. The chapter discusses intra-European violence in five novels by Arnon Grunberg, Robert Anker, Elvis Peeters, Yves Petry, and Bart Koubaa, against the backdrop of the current European crisis rhetoric and Dutch rhetoric on migration and multiculturalism. Delving into Europe’s uglier sides, these novels suggest that imagining new, better narratives after 9/11 requires facing the contradictions within the self-image of Europe and the liberal subject.
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Notes
- 1.
I refer here to Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man (1992).
- 2.
Mouffe, On the Political, 28, 31.
- 3.
For an outline of these rearrangements, see Žižek, “Liberal Multiculturalism Masks an Old Barbarism with a Human Face.”
- 4.
Shetty’s statement is quoted in an article from June 15, 2015 on the website of Amnesty International, entitled “World leaders’ neglect of refugees condemns millions to death and despair,” available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/06/world-leaders-neglect-of-refugees-condemns-millions-to-death-and-despair/ (accessed 10.11.2016).
- 5.
Under “Dutch literature,” I include novels written in Dutch by Dutch and Belgian authors. Some of the ideas, theoretical framing, and literary analyses in this chapter are drawn from two previous publications of mine (my article “Cannibalism and Literary Indigestibility: Figurations of Violence in Bart Koubaa’s De leraar” and the book chapter “Literatuur tussen cynisme en geloof: Hedendaagse kannibalen of boze blanke mannen in De leraar en De maagd Marino”). My article “Cannibalism and Literary Indigestibility” (2012) contains a more extensive analysis of Bart Koubaa’s novel De leraar [The Teacher]. My chapter “Literatuur tussen cynisme en geloof” in De lichtheid van literatuur [The Lightness of Literature] (2015), published in Dutch, contains an extensive comparative analysis of Koubaa’s novel and Yves Petry’s De maagd Marino [The Virgin Marino].
- 6.
The category “9/11 novel” refers to novels “that deal directly or indirectly with the events of 9/11” (Versluys, “9/11 as a European Event: The Novels,” 65). It is, however, a rather loosely defined generic category that has not received rigorous theoretical delineation.
- 7.
Žižek, Violence , 1.
- 8.
“Critical multiculturalism” is a term Michael Rothberg uses to describe Gray’s proposal (Rothberg, “A Failure of the Imagination: Diagnosing the Post-9/11 Novel, A Response to Richard Gray,” 153). The other quoted phrases in this sentence are Gray’s. Lucy Bond shares Gray’s critical view of 9/11 novels. In her view, American literature approached 9/11 not as an event of global historical magnitude, but as a catalyst for private events and personal traumas, to which the attacks formed a suitable background (“Compromised Critique: A Meta-critical Analysis of American Studies after 9/11,” 750). Most works, Bond argues, shunned critical historical explorations and indulged in an “overpersonalization of history” (753).
- 9.
See also Boletsi, Barbarism and Its Discontents, 48, “Still Waiting for Barbarians after 9/11? Cavafy’s Reluctant Irony and the Language of the Future,” 65, and Vaessens, De revanche van de roman: Literatuur, autoriteit en engagement, 69.
- 10.
See Platov, Yetkin, Dorsey, and Massi respectively.
- 11.
Based on the responses listed in the Wikipedia article entitled “International Reactions to the Charlie Hebdo Shooting,” available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_Charlie_Hebdo_shooting (accessed 10.11.2016).
- 12.
This observation is based on a rudimentary Internet search I have conducted.
- 13.
For a more extensive discussion of Todorov’s argument, see Boletsi, Barbarism and Its Discontents, 52–55.
- 14.
Minnaard, “Wij, zij, jullie…Over de grenzen van gastvrijheid in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren,” 58.
- 15.
Peeters, De ontelbaren, 173.
- 16.
An Amnesty International report refers to “the response of the international community” as “a shameful failure” (from an Amnesty International report entitled “The Global Refugee Crisis: A Conspiracy of Neglect,” quoted in Shaheen, “World leaders accused of shameful failure over refugee crisis,” n.p.).
- 17.
See also Minnaard, “Wij, zij, jullie…Over de grenzen van gastvrijheid in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren,” 65. For an extensive analysis of the ways in which the novel magnifies and hyperbolizes the rhetoric of doom and fear of migrants, see Minnaard, “‘Pas op, ze komen…’ De uitvergroting van een publiek doemscenario in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren.”
- 18.
The distinction between autochthonous and allochthonous citizens (both words of Greek origin, which refer to people from the same and from another land, respectively) is a common distinction in the Dutch language, decisive for determining notions of national identity and belonging. In public rhetoric, the use of these categories suggests that autochthonous citizens have a birthright to the country as opposed to allochthonous citizens (even when the latter are second-generation immigrants).
- 19.
Minnaard, “Wij, zij, jullie…Over de grenzen van gastvrijheid in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren,” 59.
- 20.
Throughout this chapter, all translations from the Dutch are mine. This quote is also discussed in Minnaard, “Wij, zij, jullie…Over de grenzen van gastvrijheid in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren,” 64.
- 21.
A detailed analysis of the way the novel exemplifies Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “state of exception” and shows that we are all potential homines sacri, see Minnaard, “Wij, zij, jullie…Over de grenzen van gastvrijheid in Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren,” 61–65.
- 22.
Peeters, De ontelbaren, 146.
- 23.
- 24.
See, for example, the article by Ignaas Devisch on the cynicism of Europeans and their disregard for refugee lives in the Belgian magazine Knack, characteristically entitled “The core of our cynicism: We don’t give a damn about bodies washed up daily” (my translation from the Dutch).
- 25.
Kaptein, Elvis Peeters’ roman De ontelbaren als kritiek op het (im)migratiedebat in Nederland en Vlaanderen, 29.
- 26.
In her article, Abbas refers particularly to the past of European colonialism: this past, which lives on in contemporary neo-liberal practices of the European Union, is suppressed so that Europeans can maintain the fiction of a “benign Europe,” she argues.
- 27.
Agamben, “The Endless Crisis as an Instrument of Power: In Conversation with Giorgio Agamben,” n.p.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Tirza is the only Dutch novel discussed in this article that has been published in English translation (by Sam Garrett). Translations from the book in this chapter are, however, mine.
- 31.
In a game he used to play with his wife, for example, he was the rapist in the park and she the victim (e.g., 364).
- 32.
Grunberg, Tirza, 176.
- 33.
Hofmeester speaks here to a little girl, Kaisa, who accompanies him in his journey in Africa.
- 34.
In the US, attacks against postmodern irony and relativism as weakening the nation’s ability to show faith and commitment to a cause were already underway before 9/11 (see, for example, Purdy, For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today). But such critiques of postmodernism acquired new impetus after 9/11 (see Roger Rosenblatt’s denunciation of “the age of irony” after 9/11, “The Age of Irony Comes to an End,” and Stanley Fish’s defense of postmodern relativism against such attacks, “Don’t Blame Relativism”).
- 35.
Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, 141.
- 36.
The age-old religiously invested narrative of “good versus evil,” popular in the rhetoric of the Bush administration after 9/11, was a problematic attempt to adapt an old narrative to a new situation. This rhetoric, however, found less fertile ground in Europe, where political rhetoric tends to be less receptive to a religious vocabulary than in the US.
- 37.
Hegel writes in his Introduction to The Philosophy of History: “Africa proper, as far as History goes back, has remained—for all purposes of connection with the rest of the World—shut up. It is the Gold-land compressed within itself—the land of childhood, which, lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night” (91, emphasis added). And later on: “At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it—that is in its northern part—belong to the Asiatic or European World” (99).
- 38.
Discussing the rage of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, he tells his students: “Rage [in the Iliad] is considered as a positive force, not as something to be ashamed of because you couldn’t restrain yourself, but as a primordial force that brings happiness” (Anker, Oorlogshond, 22).
- 39.
Anker, Oorlogshond, 23.
- 40.
The film was directed by Roel Reiné and was a big success with Dutch audiences.
- 41.
Anker in Velzen, “De wereld wordt te veel versimpeld” (Interview with Robert Anker), n.p.; my translation.
- 42.
Petry’s source of inspiration was a well-known murder case in Germany: that of a man who asked his lover to castrate him, kill him, and eat parts of his body.
- 43.
Žižek, Violence, 120.
- 44.
Gallagher in Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, 146.
- 45.
Petry, De maagd Marino, 200.
- 46.
In his study of recent Dutch literature, Vaessens traces a new “late postmodern poetics” on the rise today: overcoming a rigid adherence to literary autonomy, contemporary Dutch authors today seek to re-establish literature’s power to interfere in the social sphere. Without denouncing the postmodern scepticism towards ‘truths,’ they abandon the “cynical relativism” ascribed (not always rightfully, in my view) to postmodern poetics (De revanche van de roman: Literatuur, autoriteit en engagement, 13).
- 47.
Petry, De maagd Marino, 284.
- 48.
Davis, “États présent: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms,” 373.
- 49.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 11.
- 50.
Derrida, “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides,” 127.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Derrida, Of Hospitality, 25.
- 53.
Ibid., 83.
- 54.
Ibid., 27, 55.
- 55.
Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 29.
- 56.
The quote is from an interview with Al Arabiya, May 5, 2004, available at http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=120660&page=1 (accessed 10.2.2011).
- 57.
For the way rationalism and fideism (as irrational faith-holding) are both interrelated as the negative sides of reason and faith respectively, see Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, 148.
- 58.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (1962), Freud sees a progression of humans from an unrestricted satisfaction of instincts (a primitive state) to a repression of instincts, which is the precondition for a civilized society.
- 59.
Petry, De maagd Marino, 284.
- 60.
Gray, “Open Doors, Closed Minds: American Prose Writing at a Time of Crisis,” 147.
- 61.
Ibid.
- 62.
Ibid.
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Boletsi, M. (2017). Europe and Its Discontents: Intra-European Violence in Dutch Literature After 9/11. In: Frank, S. (eds) 9/11 in European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64209-3_11
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