P. Pattynama

Assimilation and Masquerade: Self-constructions of Indo-Dutch Women

Drawing on postmodern feminist theories of culture and identity, this article explores a model of ‘masquerading’ instead of ‘assimilation’ in analysing self-constructions of migrant women of ‘mixed race’ living in the Netherlands. Rather than as assimilated objects, these migrant women, called Indo-Dutch women, are regarded as agents who effectively intervene in the construction of national identities through masquerading strategies and ways of communication. The article also shows how masquerading strategies form a part of the conflicted colonial history of Indo-Dutch women and as such constitute contemporary life narratives and identities. One incident in a life narrative is used as an example to illustrate different interpretations.

Memories of Interracial Contacts and Mixed Race in Dutch Cinema

This essay explores the (post)colonial relationship between the present-day Netherlands and its former colony the Dutch East Indies – a continuing relationship that has generated a wide range of memories. Exploring two Dutch films on the colonial past and comparing them with two autobiographical writings of Dutch writers of mixed race, it argues that the recurrent theme of interracial contacts emerges as the privileged metaphor for the relation between Holland and its ex-colony. A recurring feature of Dutch representations of interracial contacts, it is specifically the figure of the Indonesian concubine, the so-called nyai, which continues to obsess the male gaze. The essay concludes that through their focus on loss, separation and failure in representing interraciality, the films speak primarily to the incapacity of the Dutch nation to engage effectively with its colonial past.

'...de baai...de binnenbaai...' Indië herinnerd

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Tempo Doeloe nostalgia and Brani memory community: the IWI collection as a postcolonial archive

Abstract The focus of this chapter is on the framing, the reframing, and the social biography of the IWI (Indisch Wetenschappelijk Instituut) photographs. This is a postcolonial collection of family snapshots and professional photographs taken in colonial Indonesia and, after 1945, brought to the Netherlands. From the 1950s the photographs were shared, disseminated, and brought together in a collection by Indo-Dutch immigrants, and were donated to the Amsterdam Tropenmuseum after being digitized in 2008. This chapter shows that the IWI family photographs can be perceived as “active players” in the emergence of both a national nostalgia (tempo doeloe) and a brani (daring) memory community in which the Indo-Dutch have engaged to make sense of their lives. Framed by the Tropenmuseums “regular” photographic collections, the IWI photographs have also come to balance and challenge the more official and institutionalized photographs of the Dutch colonial project in the Netherlands East Indies.