Transcriber: Katarina Ericson Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good morning. In the great dark beyond.
I know there are lots of people there, but they're hard to see.
Anyway, what I want to think about today, in a different manner,
is how the colonial past,
the past in general, but also in particular the colonial past,
influences the way we see the world today in the post-colonial present.
This seems especially relevant
at this moment of overheated political discourse,
in anticipation of the elections next week.
Because lots of politicians talk about immigration,
the immigration of people who come from other places,
who may have another religion, who may have another skin color,
and nonetheless, in this overheated debate,
all the politicians who participate are male and white.
There's one woman.
And it makes us wonder.
It makes me wonder why we think
it's completely natural that all these politicians,
who are vying for a place in the next government,
that we think it's normal and natural that they're white and male.
This has a history.
There is a long history that doesn't only go back to our colonial past,
but goes back even further,
even though I would like to focus on our particular colonial history
in the Dutch East Indies.
For many of you, this picture may be familiar.
It's one of these iconic photographs of the Dutch colonial past,
with, on the left-hand side, a Dutch colonial civil servant,
and on the right-hand side, the Sultan of Surakarta, what is now Solo.
Historical memory. How do we remember the past?
Don't worry, I will not bore you with ghoulish stories about graveyards.
There are processes whereby most of us individually recognize, if we're honest,
and we're not always honest, but if we're honest,
we acknowledge that we tend to change the narrative
we tell about our own lives.
We tend to gloss over, sometimes even consciously omit
stories about events that are embarrassing.
On the other hand, we tend to magnify moments in our own personal past
that we're proud of.
It's a natural process,
and we change these stories depending on the social circumstances,
or depending on the stage in the life cycle.
At a collective level, such processes of omission,
or glossing over, and remembering, occur in a very similar fashion.
A French historian, about 60 years ago,
mentioned, and used as a metaphor, cemeteries,
because he said historical memory is like a cemetery with limited space.
At certain moments in time, old graves need to be removed
in order to make place for the shiny marble of new tombstones.
What we see here on the left is the old Jewish cemetery in Prague,
and on the right the World War II cemetery in Coleville in Normandy.
And so cemetery, and the changes that take place over time in graveyards,
is a nice metaphor for the way
in which we remember the past in general and especially the Dutch colonial past.
The 'Happy Marriage' between the Dutch civil service,
between Dutch colonial rule and indigenous elites.
It's one of the cornerstones of the way in which we remember
Dutch colonial history in Southeast Asia.
Association instead of assimilation.
As Dutch colonial culture, we didn't somehow presume
that Western culture, Western values,
ought to be imposed on indigenous local cultures.
We collaborated with indigenous elites.
We represented this 'Happy Marriage' in a series of photographs
that circulated not only in the Dutch East Indies itself
but were also sent back to the European mother country
in order to justify, to create a sense of normalcy
that a small country,
with, in 1900, about 4 million people,
ruled an enormous archipelago,
with, in 1900, about 50 to 55 million,
it's uncertain how large the Indonesian population was around 1900.
So these photographs with this invocation of the 'Happy Marriage'
between the Dutch colonial government and native indigenous authority structures
is what circulated both in southeast Asia and in the Dutch East Indies.
So we see the difference
between on the one hand, beefy, sober Dutchmen,
who convey a sense of self-discipline, convey a sense of rationality,
standing next to indigenous leaders who were bejeweled,
who wore necklaces, earrings,
who had an aura of weakness, or vanity,
and therefore also, perhaps, an aura of femininity.
This way of representing oriental leaders has a very, very long history.
It's a history that goes back to ancient Greece;
in the 5th century B.C.,
at the time of the Athenian City-State,
chroniclers in Athens already described Persian leaders in Asia Minor
of the Near East,
with all sorts of terms that invoked femininity,
that invoked oriental despotism,
that emphasized ostentatious display of power,
and therefore, suggested unmanly conduct,
unmanly virtue or lack of manly virtue.
Ancient Greece was followed, of course, by the Roman Empire.
This is an Emperor in the 3rd century A.C.
he came from Syria, he ruled for only four years.
He was a teenager when he arrived in Rome,
and he was described by contemporaries already,
as being unconventional, to say it mildly,
in both his religious beliefs and his sexual practices.
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire,
by contemporaries but also by later historians,
was often described as having been caused
by the nefarious influences
of oriental leadership and despotism.
The quote here is from Edward Gibbon, a major historian in the 18th century,
who wrote a monumental work called
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
He said it very succinctly, he said, "Rome was at length humbled
beneath the effeminate luxury of oriental despotism."
Other historians have used somewhat more harsh language,
such as an historian in the early 19th century,
who said that this emperor lived an unspeakably disgusting life,
and that's the reason why the decline of the Roman empire was accelerated.
So, here we're back to these images,
these images of the 'Happy Marriage' between West and East,
the images of Dutch civil servants walking arm in arm with, on the left,
the Sultan of Jokdakarta, and again here on the right,
Sultan Pakubuwono of Surakarta, what is Solo now.
And it was this ritual,
whereby the alleged equality
between Dutch civil servants and native rulers
was portrayed through photography,
even at the same time the Dutch colonial government
felt itself superior in discipline and rationality,
in technological know-how,
and anticipated, such as the Governor General in 1933,
who said that that it would last for another 300 years.
I have to hurry.
There's a tradition of wedding photographs
so whether consciously or unconsciously,
these pictures of 'Happy Marriage'
between Dutch colonial rulers and native elites
appeal to a general bourgeois tradition beginning at the end of the 19th century
when the technology of photography became available to ordinary citizens.
Of course, one thing that was remembered in the life cycle were weddings.
So, there is a tradition that, to some extent,
the circulation of these formal photographs tie into.
Here we see, on the left, the Sultan of Jokdakarta in the early 30s,
and on the right,
the Maharadja of Patiala in Northwest India.
In order to indicate that it wasn't uniquely Dutch,
I mean, this also happened in the British Empire,
we also have pictures like this,
of this deliberate representation of native kings or leaders,
of indigenous rajahs or maharajahs as effeminate,
which also occurred in both the British and the French Empires.
This is a picture from 1922,
and the necklace he is wearing was designed by Cartier in Paris.
What does it mean that a lot of these photographs
tend to emphasize the femininity
of these indigenous sultans or maharajahs?
What is the significance of being like a woman?
In general, both in the public imagination as well as in scholarly discourses,
womanhood or femininity is often seen as being closer to nature.
Women in general, and that may still prevail today,
are viewed as being more bound by both sexuality and reproduction,
and therefore, women are seen as more emotional, as more unpredictable,
as less rational, as less self-disciplined.
And as a result,
the deliberate or unwitting strategy of these photographs,
to represent indigenous leaders
as feminine in appearance, as vain,
also creates the impression they're close to nature, primitive,
they're less predictable,
and therefore, not capable of ruling their own independent country,
as a result of which,
European colonial rule was both inevitable and justified.
When the Indonesian Nationalist Movement emerged in the 20th century,
Indonesian men began to appropriate western political theory
in order to establish an independence movement,
which they fought for in the period after World War II.
It's very important to appear western, to discard sarongs.
Sukarno at some point even said
that any Javanese man who was wearing a sarong looks like a woman,
and therefore, cannot be a good nationalist.
So being western, adopting western sartorial styles,
became important in the Indonesian Nationalist Movement.
And now I come back to the beginning,
- I'm going to make it -
back to the beginning:
why do we think that it's normal that politicians,
who have legitimacy, who vie for political success,
look like the people on the left?
We have progressed, I think,
in the last 10, 15, 20, maybe 30 years,
to see more female politicians on the Dutch political horizon,
but it's still rare.
Why don't we think it's normal to have politicians who look like this?
Especially after the performance of the Mayor of Rotterdam this morning,
it makes me realize all the more that we should have more politicians
who look like this and who participate in the political discussion,
especially when it focuses on immigration,
and especially when ugly rhetoric is used, in some cases,
about the role of immigrants in our country,
and nonetheless, all the politicians who discuss these issues are white.
Now I want to make a slight detour to the United States,
I have an American passport,
I voted with great pleasure for Barack Obama in 2008,
and he is now in the White House.
Here is a somewhat propaganda-like picture.
He has only been in office for a year and a half,
the protests have been tremendous, really from the very beginning.
The Tea Party protests here on the right,
ostensibly focused on issues such as state rights,
the right to carry guns, anti-abortion,
against the intrusion of the Federal Government in daily life,
at the local level and at the state level,
these alleged political complaints against the Obama administration.
I think, however,
they are more about race and racism
than they are about political issues.
In America, there is still a tendency to think
that politicians have to be white.
As here in the Netherlands;
I mean, they can be female, but they have to be white.
I think this violent opposition from the right wing in the United States
is really grounded in a lack of comfort
with a President who is not white.
What we see here
are representations of Obama on right-wing websites
that hark back to this long history of Orientalism,
this long history of representing Asian leaders,
sultans, maharajahs, local chiefs,
as effeminate or close to nature.
So I hope that we can think differently in the next decade,
maybe already in the next five years,
about the assumptions we make about the legitimacy of political leadership,
and the way in which political leadership is embodied,
and why we think it's normal that we have so many white male politicians,
and why we have so few politicians who don't conform
to the model that we carry with us.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Host: Frances, stay here for a moment, if you will.
I agree on your theories,
but the US does have a black President,
and does have 500 black mayors.
How do you explain that in Holland we don't have,
aside from the Mayor of Rotterdam,
anyone from another ethnicity in a prominent political position?
FG: Well, on the one hand, you have this tradition of Orientalism
which continues to play a role here in Europe,
and I'm not only talking about the Netherlands
but also France and England, of course,
whereas in America you have the history of slavery.
The transatlantic slave trade and slavery.
And slavery I guess,
induces forms of guilt and retroactive 'wieder gudmachung'
that may not live as much in this post-colonial country,
such as the Netherlands.
I think the Indies community in this country has had a hard time,
establishing its presence,
and I think in America the rhetoric about slavery
creates different social and political conditions.
on the left, not on the right, and in the South, of course.
OS: OK. So that may change here one day?
FG: I hope so. Next decade...
OS: Thank you very much.
(Applause)