Communities of Fear: The Politics of ‘Strangering’ and the Ethics of Resistance in Naima El Bezaz’s Vinexvrouwen

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Moroccan-Dutch author Naima El Bezaz’s novel Vinexvrouwen (Suburban Women), which explores the interplay between the representation of migrants’ cultural difference, the politics of ‘strangering’ and the ethics of resistance. By means of gendered practice of storytelling, the autobiographical novel unfolds the native Dutch people’s fear of a loss at the hands of globalizing forces: mass migration, cultural relativism and the hybridization of their national identity. This rhetoric of fear is channelled into deep resentment against migrants represented as ‘fetishised’ strangers, excluded them from the ‘imagined community' of belonging. In my close-reading, I focus on how El Bezaz’s novel engages a dialectical process of estrangement and embodiment, of exclusion and inclusion, of solidarity and resistance in its representation of migrants’ cultural difference. Examining the bond between storytelling and the extra-literary reality/new realism, I delve into the way the text narrates the process of ‘strangering' migrants as communities of fear and instead expresses resistance and solidarity in face of exclusionary mechanism.

KEYWORDS:

• Representation of migrants
• communities of fear
• cultural difference
• the politics of ‘strangering,' the ethics of resistance
• Vinexvrouwen (Suburban Women)

Introduction

Contemporary literature of migration in the Netherlands has its own dynamic in the literary and cultural field. By means of their narratives, ‘migrant writers’ participate in the society’s social, cultural and literary debates. Belonging to the category of these writers, Naima El Bezaz was the most well-known female writer of Moroccan background, who migrated with her family from Morocco to the Netherlands when she was four years old. She published her debut novel De weg naar het noorden (The way to the North) in 1995, for which she won the 1996 Jenny Smelik IBBY Prize. Her other fictional works include: a collection of short stories De Minnares van de duivel (The Devil’s Mistress) 2002, and a number of novels De Verstotene (The Outcast) 2006, Het gelukssyndroom (The Happiness Syndrome) 2008, Vinexvrouwen (Suburban Women) 2011, Méér Vinexvrouwen (More Suburban Women) 2012 and In Dienst van de Duivel (Serving the Devil) 2013. Themes in El Bezaz’ works range from cultural criticism of gender and sexuality, reflection on her psychological crisis, construction of identity to a social critique of Dutch racism towards migrants. Despite the controversy which her works generated, no full-length work of El Bezaz has been translated into English or Arabic. Having struggled with deep depression, El Bezaz, alas, committed suicide in 2020 at the age of 46 to leave behind her family and literary legacy.

Owing to the fact that she touches upon the issues of gender and sexuality in her narratives, El Bezaz received wide attention and criticism as a liberal Muslim writer of migration background. The Flemish founder of liberal think-tank Liberals Dirk Verhofstad glorifies El Bezaz’s dare narratives and positions her next to Ayaan Hirsi Ali in his book Derde feministische golf (The Third Feminist Wave, 2006). On the other hand, in his article ‘Smakeloos fruit. Tussen feminisme en ramptoerisme’ (Tasteless fruit). Between feminism and disaster tourism, (2006), the Flemish author Tom Naegels describes her works as a combination of pulp and engagement and argues that she should have stayed with her writings in the domains of politics or social criticism. El Bezaz’s novel Vinexvrouwen is indeed well engaged in social criticism. As Yves T’Sjoen’s reflected on this novel, ‘the author presents a mocking caricature of Dutch-indigenous, mainly racist, women living in boring suburbs of cities and more generally presenting a critical (or better: a superficial, even simplistic) view on provincialism in the Netherlands’ (T’Sjoen 2013: 268). Even though El Bezaz’ works received wide criticism, academic studies on her works are quite limited, and this study aims at filling this gap.

El Bezaz came on the scene at a time – during the 1990s – when Dutch publishers were eagerly looking for ‘migrant writers’ who could express the change in Dutch society. At the turn of the new millennium, Dutch multiculturality described as the ‘period of malaise’ or ‘multicultural drama’ (Scheffer 2000). The ‘multicultural drama’ debate caused wide polarisation among the Dutch population: the old left versus the new right, political correctness versus new realism, and ‘autochthonous’ (native) Dutch versus ‘allochthonous’ (non-native) Others. Commenting on this crisis, T’Sjoen claims: ‘current debates on multicultural society indicate the diversity, if not the irreconcilability, of standpoints, and the impact of social developments on the discourse about life in a multicultural society’ (264). Authors with migration background joined in this socio-political debate about the failure of a multicultural society to express their standpoints. El Bezaz takes the social challenge seriously, admitting that Dutch multiculturalism has failed as she stated in a conversation with Liddie Austin: ‘Mistrust reigns between different groups, and there is also no trust in one’s own community.’ (Tussen de verschillende groepen heerst wantrouwen, maar ook in de eigen gemeenschap is er geen vertrouwen [2002: 11–13]). Reflecting on this period of malaise, El Bezaz’s Vinexvrouwen charts exclusionary mechanisms of the ‘allochthonous’ (non-native) people and engages in intercultural negotiations.

Vinexvrouwen was written during the time of a particular political, social and cultural context in Dutch society. With the rise of the right-wing populist anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim party PVV (Party for Freedom) during the publication of the novel (2011), the ‘autochthonous’/ ‘allochthonous’ dichotomy marked a stark social polarization. The PVV party changed the political discourse on migrants radically, which was described as new-realist rhetoric or what Baukje Prins calls ‘hyperrealism:’ saying things that other political parties never dared to say (Prins 2004: 42–43). The party succeeded in mobilizing the White people’s fear of mass migration and cultural relativism. The White people feel that they are socially and culturally lost in the face of the increasing visible presence of Muslim migrants, who are considered an urgent existential threat. The party’s rhetoric of fear led to hostility to and racism against Muslim migrants whose culture/religion is viewed within the paradigm of what Sara Ahmed describes as ‘stranger cultures’ (2000: 6). Emerged as a new-realist discourse, this ‘allochtonization’ or culturalization in public and political rhetoric forces the dichotomy between the ‘civilized’ Dutch people versus the ‘uncivilized’ migrant people of ethnic origin.

In her article ‘‘Dutchness’ and the migrant ‘other:’ From Suppressed Superiority to Explicit Exclusion?’ Halleh Ghorashi contends that it is more accurate to see ‘new realism’ as a trend that began at the turn of the century, demanding that we must be allowed to say what we think about migrants (2010: 108). The new realist is someone who ‘fight against the so-called left-wing, politically correct views of cultural relativism’ (108). ‘This bluntness is mainly directed at migrants – specifically those with an Islamic background – and anyone (politician or not) who would defend the space of migrants within Dutch society’ (108). This ‘new realist’/ ‘hyperrealist’ discourse represents many native Dutch people who are supportive of the harsh language used by far-right politicians against Muslim migrants. It even legitimizes racism towards these migrants, seen as ungrateful of the tolerance and openness of Dutch society that accommodated their cultural difference. As Ghorashi explains in her article ‘Racism and ‘the Ungrateful Other’ in the Netherlands,’ the supporters of this hard exclusionary rhetoric think of themselves as victims rather than aggressors or racists (2014: 104). El Bezaz’s novel narrates this ‘new realist’ discourse that dominates the public arena that Muslim migrants are seen as groups with a completely ‘problematic’ culture or rather religion, who needed to be tolerated, if not excluded from the Dutch liberal society.

The Dutch rhetoric of Fear and exclusion of migrants has become mainstream in other European countries of migration and multiculturalism, too. In his ‘Introduction: On Living with Difference’ to his book Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy contends that people are faced with the unrealistic or unwelcome obligation to dwell peaceably with aliens and strangers (migrants) (2015: 2). As he states, ‘[i]t now appears as though any desire to combine cultural diversity with a hospitable civic order […] must be subjected to ridicule and abuse’ (2). Gilroy considers, then, thinking about insights that might help anxious individuals and societies to cope with the challenges involved in dwelling comfortably in proximity to the unfamiliar without becoming fearful and hostile (3). Denouncing today’s cheap appeals to absolute national and ethnic difference in the West (6), he recommends that: ‘We need to consider whether the scale upon which sameness and difference are calculated might be altered productively so that the strangeness of strangers goes out of focus and other dimensions of a basic sameness can be acknowledged and made significant’ (3).

Likewise, in her book Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, Sara Ahmed addresses a critical discourse on the topical theme of strangers, Otherness and cultural difference. While traditionally post-colonialism has concerned itself with the concept of ‘The Other,’ Ahmed focuses on the concept of ‘the stranger’, the migrant. She analyses how the figure of ‘the stranger’ is produced, showing how it has been expelled as the origin of danger or celebrated as the origin of difference in European multiculturalism (2000: 5). The author contends that both of these standpoints are problematic as they involve ‘stranger fetishism,’ which she believes ‘invests the figure of a stranger with a life of its own insofar as it cuts ‘the stranger’ off from the histories of its determination’ (Ahmed’s emphasis: 5). It is the fear of the stranger that constructs him in fetishised terms, as being suspicious to the social standards of commonality or normality (5). The construction of a common community against the perception of the uncommon, of sensing the normal against the suspicious, is socially framed. Ahmed proposes that we can only avoid stranger fetishism ‘by examining the social relationships that are concealed by this very fetishism … we need to consider how the stranger is an effect of processes of inclusion and exclusion’ (6).

In light of this theoretical framework and the new-realist debate, I analyze Bezaz’s novel Vinexvrouwen, which explores the interplay between the representation of migrants’ cultural difference, the politics of ‘strangering’ and the ethics of resistance. The storytelling of the author’s real experiences in a typical Dutch Vinex-neighbourhood restores the bond between the fictional text and the extra-literary reality. The autobiographical narrator, named Naima, describes how this dreamed White neighbourhood is invaded by an influx of migrants who exchange feelings of suspicion, fear and threat. Drawing upon the polarization between us versus them, the narrative unfolds the politics of ‘strangering’ in the representation of migrants and their cultural difference and the ethics of resistance of such politics. El Bezaz’s position as a migrant woman and a Dutch-raised person enabled her to engage in an intercultural debate, and this is the reason behind selecting this novel to be a subject of analysis in this article. Reflecting on the discourse of new realism which illustrates how the Dutch public becomes hostile toward Muslim people, my analysis of this novel contributes to understanding the complexities of Dutch multiculturality during the last two decades.

El Bezaz’s gendered practice of storytelling incorporates strategies of ‘new-realist’ representation in combination with postmodern irony and humour. With its ironic and humorous effects which characterize the novel’s literary stylistics and thematics, the storytelling of problematic Dutch multiculturality is smoothly narrated and criticized. In my close-reading of Vinexvrouwen, I draw on Gilroy’s and Ahmed’s conceptualization of the politics of ‘strangering’ in negotiating how migrants are represented as ‘fetishised’ strangers as a way of excluding them from the ‘imagined community’ of belonging (Anderson 1983). The narrative unfolds the native Dutch people’s fear of a loss at the hands of globalizing forces: mass migration and cultural relativism. This rhetoric of fear is channelled into deep resentment against migrant communities, represented as communities of fear. El Bezaz’s novel engages, then, a dialectical process of estrangement and embodiment, of exclusion and inclusion, of solidarity and resistance in its representation of migrants. Examining the bond between storytelling and the extra-literary reality/new realism, I delve into the way the text narrates the process of ‘strangering’ migrants as communities of fear and instead expresses resistance and solidarity in face of an exclusionary rhetoric.

1. Communities of Fear: Stranger Cultures, Fetishized Strangers!

Vinexvrouwen is written in a hybrid form combining devices of a new/realist novel and postmodern irony and humour. Irony and humour are employed as subversive narrative strategies through which the author delivers her criticism. As pointed out by Linda Hutcheon in her book Irony’s Edge, if ‘irony is an interpretative and intentional move,-it is the making or inferring of meaning in addition to what is stated, together with an attitude’; humour is a particular way of looking at the world, a critical engagement with the real (1994: 11). Indeed, in El Bezaz’s novel, humour and irony are a liberating force conductive to psychological feelings of well-being, which has subversive effects in the way we see the world around us. The most significant psychological function of humour in the text is the release of tension and nostalgia by the ironic laughter. While charting the interplay of irony, nostalgia and the postmodern in her essay ‘Irony, Nostalgia and the Postmodern,’ Hutcheon explains that contemporary culture is characterized by a complicated, and postmodernly paradoxical, move that is ‘an ironizing of nostalgia itself, of the very urge to look backward for authenticity’ (2000: 205). She elaborates on her point as follows: ‘Our contemporary culture is indeed nostalgic; some parts of it – postmodern parts – are aware of the risks and lures of nostalgia, and seek to expose those through irony’ (206).

With the subversive effects of humour and irony, El Bezaz narrates stories and maps memories of a particular Vinex-neighbourhood called Vinexwijk located in the outer area of Amsterdam as experienced by the author herself. Significantly, the excess of El Bezaz’s narrativization in describing this White elitist Vinex-space bears on the constructedness of this autobiography, its augmented interplay between fictional storytelling and the writer’s factual experiences. Important literary aspects in narrating Vinex-stories are the incorporation of dialogue and observation. Dialogue functions as a bridge between different characters, revealing their actions and their thoughts to the reader. Whereas, the autobiographical narrator’s observation in telling her stories in this White Vinex-space witnesses both internally as a participant and externally as an observer of the events and their climax. As such, the reader experiences the stories through the eyes, ears, thoughts and feelings of the autobiographical protagonist, a first-person narrator named Naima. Yet, the strategy of dialogue gives ample space to other characters to express their thoughts, feelings and attitudes, which makes the text a dialogical narrative.

All the characters in the novel are caricatured and stereotyped women-neighbours, as either native Dutch women or women of different ethnic origin. By caricaturing her characters, El Bezaz attempts to raise awareness about mutual ethnic prejudices and cultural stereotypes, if not deconstructing them. In and through the Dutch language, the writer shapes her literary personality, using a playful ironic and humorous style to entertain the reader with her representation of problematic relationships between herself and her women-neighbours. With regards to linguistic aspect of the text, the author does not incorporate bilingualism in her narrative, except when referring to some names of Moroccan traditional food. The narrator is proud of the fact that she writes in Dutch and masters Dutch language and even its accent, speaking Dutch with what she calls ‘gooise r’ (El Bezaz 2011: 10).

The novel’s thematic focus is on the ‘us and them’ attitude that often afflicts current discussions about Dutch multiculturality. The text represents the ‘otherness’ of migrants as a strange cultural intrusion in the Dutch White Vinex-suburb. It spots light on the native Dutch people’s indifference towards migrants, as occupying the position of the stranger as an origin of danger and of ‘fetishised difference’. The ‘Other’/the migrant is viewed as a clearly delimited category, an antipode of the ‘Self’, an alter ego of those who are alien and are part of another cultural tradition. At the front page of the novel, Naima shows how the Other is problematic to the Self when she quotes Jean-Paul Sartre’s phrase: ‘The hell is the Other’ (‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’). This phrase corresponds to the way the Other is constructed in the text as an origin of danger and of fetishised difference, and thus, as a threat to the Self. Through her smooth storytelling, Naima tells about her experiences in Vinex-district around the city of Amsterdam where she has been living since ten years. She records how ‘[the White autochthons] had looked a little worried when they saw that coloured people came to live next to them’ ([blanke autochtonen] hadden wat bezorgd gekeken toen ze zagen dat er gekleurde mensen naast hen kwamen wonen. [Vinexvrouwen, 7]). Drawing on the polarized discourse of ‘autochthons versus allochthons,’ Naima tells how the proximity of Others imposes a state of fear, threatening the cultural homogenization of the White neighbourhood.

In her book The Cultural Politics of Emotions, Ahmed considers fear as ‘affective politics’ that threats life itself. She suggests that ‘[f]ear’s relation to the object has an important temporal dimension: we fear an object that approaches us’ (2004: 64–65). Indeed, fear is narrated as an affective politics in the representation of Whiteness versus Otherness in El Bezaz’s novel. The title Vinexvrouwen (Suburban women) combines a particular Vinex-space and women, mainly White women, but also women of different ethnic-background. From a Moroccan-Dutch woman’s perspective, Naima reflects on the native Dutch women’s racist perception of different ethnic groups as unwanted strangers in Dutch society. About the arrival of Turkish-Dutch people to the neighbourhood, Naima comments as follows: ‘For the first time I saw my neighbours outside. The scare was on their face.’ (Voor het eerst zag ik al mijn buren buiten staan. De schrik stond op hun gezicht [28]). The neighbours’ unwelcome facial expression articulates their hostility and racism towards the new neighbours of Turkish origin. The following reaction of three native Dutch women towards new Turkish-Dutch neighbours illustrates how they consider migrant minorities as communities of fear:

‘You see,’ said the first neighbour. ‘They laugh at us. Actually they say: we take over the neighborhood.’

‘Yes, but we have here a Moroccan, too, and she does nothing and has only two children as it should be.’

‘Zie je wel,’ zei de eerste buurvrouw.’Ze lachen ons uit. Eigenlijk zeggen ze: we nemen de buurt over.’

‘Ja, maar we hebben hier ook een Marokkaan en die doet niks en ze heeft maar twee kinderen zoals het hoort.’ (28–29)

The native Dutch women’s hostility towards the new Turkish-Dutch neighbours underlines how migrants are perceived as strange foreigners, stuck in an ethno-cultural paradigm of fetishism. In the women’s remarks, Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch people feature as the origin of danger and exotic difference, perceived as invaders and unwanted strangers who are taking over the neighbourhood. Their emotions indicate the fear from these alien bodies, who impose a threat of danger and insecurity. This affective politics of fear shows how White people feel that they are culturally lost in the face of the increasing visible presence of Muslim migrants, who are considered an urgent existential threat. Even though the reality described in this quote is purely fictional, the native Dutch women’s racist reaction contributes to the larger frame of the perception of migration and Dutch multiculturality as problematic. Nevertheless, the quote juxtaposes different standpoints with regard to the perception of migrants.

In an emphatic style and tone, this rhetoric of fear manifests in the way the native Dutch women reject Muslim neighbours whose culture/religion is viewed within the paradigm of what Ahmed describes as ‘stranger cultures’ (2000: 6). Ahmed calls a socially ‘fetishised figure’ whose difference and supposed danger are intertwined (2000: 5). She considers that the fetishisation of ‘strangers’ serves to bolster Western culture and identity. Likewise, El Bezaz’s reflection on the White people’s attitude towards Muslim migrants, be them Turks or Moroccans, shows the process of ‘strangering’ them as part of a White discourse of exclusion and racism. The novel examines social relations in Vinex-neighbourhood by means of giving voice to the caricatured women-neighbours to express their attitudes towards, and perception of migrants and their cultures. While rethinking ethnic and cultural transformation of their White Vinex-neighbourhood, the three Dutch women choose to vote for the anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic party PVV to tighten the invasion of those unwanted Muslim strangers, as the following quote illustrates:

‘I’ll vote for PVV,’ she finally said.

‘Oh,’ said the other neighbour. ‘But the SGP can also do something about it. They also do not want these Muslims.’

The third neighbour looked despairingly. ‘I have no problems with them. I have very nice Moroccan and Turkish colleagues. But these are civilized.’

‘Ik ga PVV stemmen,’ zei ze uiteindelijk.

‘O,’ zei de andere buurvrouw. ‘Maar de SGP kan er ook wat van. Die moeten die moslims ook niet.’

De derde buurvrouw keek vertwijfeld. ‘Ik heb geen problemen met ze. Ik heb hele leuke Marokkaanse en Turkse collega’s. Maar die zijn beschaafd.’ (28–9)

In fact, the dialogue reflects on the recent ‘allochtonization’ or culturalization as a dominant discourse in public and political rhetoric in Dutch society. It charts the dichotomy between the accepted ‘civilized’ Dutch people and the ‘uncivilized,’ fetishized people of ethnic origin. The Dutch women’s decision to vote for the extreme right, anti-Muslim party PVV invokes the politics of demonization of those fetishized figures, or barbarian Muslim migrants as a community of fear. With the rise of the PPV Party during the publication of the novel (2011), the ‘autochthonous’/ ‘allochthonous’ dichotomy added to further polarization between White Dutch and Muslim migrants. The populist Party’s new-realist rhetoric changed thereby the political discourse on immigration and integration radically, ‘saying things that other political parties never dared to say’ (Prins 2004: 42–43). The novel narrates, then, this ‘new realist’ discourse that dominates the Dutch public as well as the political arena that Muslim migrants are seen as groups with a completely ‘problematic’ culture/religion who needed to be tolerated, if not excluded from the Dutch liberal society.

Representing Muslim ethnic groups of Turkish and Moroccan origin with a religiously radical difference legitimizes the women’s discourse of exclusion and racism. As Ahmed explains, such politics of ‘strangering’ shows how the figure of ‘the stranger’ is expelled as the origin of danger or celebrated as the origin of difference (2000: 5). The three Dutch women’s discourse invokes the PVV party’s rhetoric that the presence of Muslims and Islam in the Netherlands is an act of Islamization of the country and of Europe at large. These caricatured women represent many Dutch people who are supportive of the harsh language used by far-right politicians against Muslim migrants to the extent there seems to be resistance to the use of the term racism. Even though they are racist, these new-realist Dutch women deny being so on the ground that those Muslims are ‘uncivilized strangers’. Thus, as expressed in their attitudes toward Muslim migrants, Islamophobia is represented as a form of cultural racism than a form of religious intolerance, as Tariq Modood defines it (1997: 4).

El Bezaz’s narrative not only reflects on, but constructs the public new-realist rhetoric of fear that characterizes Dutch multiculturality. The native Dutch women’s Islamophobic emotions chart a dichotomy of Whitness versus Otherness, of inclusiveness versus exclusiveness: of those who belong to the Dutch ‘imagined community’ and those who fall outside it. Their feelings of fear against the Muslim minorities demonstrate Ahmed’s idea that ‘the cultural politics of emotions’ create ‘others’ by aligning some bodies with each other inside a community and marginalizing other bodies (2004: 69). According to Ahmed, emotions can lead to collective politics and social alliances; this social power is exhibited through politics and social movement, even to create national identities (69). In their Islamophobic discourse, the native Dutch women set boundaries between them and the Muslims of Turkish and Moroccan origin as communities of fear; they all agree that those foreigner and stranger Muslims impose danger and threat to their Vinex-neighbourhood. Determined to vote for the PVV part which expresses openly their racism towards Muslim migrants, they returned to their houses with feelings of resentment towards this threatening Muslim Other. While observing these women’s fearful and hostile reaction, Naima wonders about her position in this becoming heterogeneous space, while staring at her new Turkish neighbours unloading their furnitures.

Along with the White Dutch women’s racism towards Muslim migrants, the novel narrates how different ethnic groups and even how members of the same minority have adopted the White discourse of exclusion, expressing hostility towards each other. The protagonist continues mapping her everyday experiences and stories on this multicultural neighbourhood in a disappointed and much depressed tone. In another episode, Naima narrates how all of a sudden she encountered in the schoolyard a Moroccan woman coming with her husband and children to live in this Vinex-neighbourhood: ‘It was just my intention to live in a white neighbourhood without migrants; for I just don’t feel good with youthful loiterers [migrants’ hanging-around youth]. We approached each other suspiciously.’ (Het was juist mijn bedoeling geweest om in een witte wijk te gaan wonen zonder allochtonen, want ook ik heb geen zin in hangjongeren. Wantrouwend naderden wij elkaar [35–36]). Naima’s hostile feelings towards fellow Moroccan migrants imply the construction of racist boundaries even within the same migrant minority. Even though she describes the Moroccan woman in a positive sense, Naima appears psychologically unable to realize and eventually to accept that she will be living in a multicultural neighbourhood, where native Dutch, Turks and Moroccans are approaching each other suspiciously.

Even though she seems appropriating the native Dutch women’s exclusionary discourse, Naima shows solidarity with her Moroccan-Dutch community and resistance of the rhetoric of fear of the native Dutch people. She reconsiders her attitude, telling: ‘And they say that Moroccans always yell at each other, but autochthons do it as well. (En dan zeggen ze dat Marokkanen altijd tegen elkaar schreeuwen, maar autochtonen kunnen er ook wat van [92]). Through this statement, Naima reverses the stereotyping images about Moroccan-Dutch people through her counter-critique of her native Dutch neighbours. Doing so, the autobiographical narrator contests the stereotypical representation of migrants in a way that criticizes Dutch multiculturality as being exclusionary to Dutch people of migration background. Through the narrator’s counter-discourse, the novel resists the politics of ‘strangering’ which reinforces existing differences to enhance boundaries at both cultural and national levels.

2. The Representation of the Normal Versus the Suspicious

Vinexvrouwen functions, then, as a kind of socio-historical ‘cultural archive’ (Adelson 2005: 14), where changing perceptions of sociality or Dutch multiculturality are both tracked and imagined. The novel narrates further how this Dutch Vinex-neighbourhood becomes a matter of continuous worry and tension, instead of tolerance and conviviality. Both native Dutch and people of non-Dutch origin – Turks and Moroccans – express their worries and speculation towards living in a multi-ethnic space. Fear becomes the characteristic atmosphere of this everyday transforming Vinex-space. While engaged in discussion with each other, three ‘allochtoon’ (non-native) women-neighbours: Naima and Fatiha (Moroccans) and Sultan (a Turk) express their fear of the arrival of new Polish neighbours:

‘What is going on?’

‘New neighbours,’ voiced out Fatiha.

‘Yes, two houses hereafter,’ confirmed Sultan.

‘Friendly, isn’t it?’

They looked at me indignantly. I felt slightly intimidated.

‘No, not friendly. These are not normal people. They are guest workers.’

‘Oh, just like our fathers?’

‘How dare you say that? Our fathers have broken their backs working in factories.’

‘Wat is er dan?’

‘Nieuwe buren,’ bracht Fatiha uit.

‘Ja, twee huizen verderop,’ bevestigde Sultan.

‘Gezellig toch?’

Ze keken me verontwaardigd aan. Ik voelde me lichtelijk geïntimideerd.

‘Nee, niet gezellig. Het zijn geen gewone mensen. Het zijn gastarbeiders.’

‘O, net als onze vaders?’

‘Hoe durf je dat te zeggen? Onze vaders hebben hun ruggen kapot gewerkt in fabrieken.’ (38)

Even though perceived as ‘fetishized strangers’ themselves, these ‘allochtoon’ women pessimistically look at the Polish guest workers as ‘suspicious’ people. Unlike their labour fathers with whom they show solidarity, the Polish workers are described as ‘criminals and troublemakers,’ and thus a dangerous threat to their security. Despite being Europeans and White, the Poles become the targets of the Moroccan- and Turkish-Dutch women’s criticism. The irony is that though the Poles are closer to the native Dutch people in terms of culture and religion, they are also stigmatized as ‘fetishized strangers’ owing to their status as ‘guest workers’. This liminal situation emphasizes what Ahmed calls ‘stranger danger’ in a way that justifies the ‘allochtoon’ women’s fearful feelings and hostility towards these Polish guest workers. It is the fear of the stranger that constructs him in fetishised terms, as being suspicious to the social standards of commonality or normality (Ahmed 2000: 5). The ‘allochtoon’ women experience ways of ‘sensing’ the difference between normal and suspicious people.

Intriguingly, all neighbours in this Vinex-neighbourhood are involved, then, in the construction of a common community against the perception of the uncommon. Naima elaborates on this idea by telling that all her neighbours have mutual feelings of fear, as she puts it: ‘The problem continues to shift, at first the Indos, then the Surinamese, Turks, Moroccans, and now the Poles, and they all hate each other because they feel threatened.’ (Het problem blijft zich verschuiven, eerst de indo’s, toen de Surinamers, de Turken, de Marokkanen en nu de Polen, en allemaal haten ze elkaar omdat ze zich bedreigd voelen [38]). Feelings of threat and danger continue to affect these ethnic groups’ perception. This representation of cultural politics of emotions, among which fear, constructs migrant minorities as communities of fear. ‘Fear, like pain, is felt as unpleasant form of intensity. But while the lived experience of fear may be unpleasant in the present, the unpleasantness of fear also relates to the future’, Ahmed writes (2004: 65). Likewise, the novel expresses how the unpleasant experience of fear prevents different ethnic groups from establishing social harmony in the present and the future. This pessimistic view of Dutch multiculturality squares with what Paul Scheffer describes as ‘multicultural drama’ (2000).

Significantly, El Bezaz employs new realism in representing the problematic perception of communities of fear. A new socio-cultural and psychological reality requires reflection and criticism which appear to be achieved in her novel through the strategy of a new realist discourse. In this context, in her article ‘Process and Product: The Implications of Metafiction for the Theory of the Novel as a Mimetic Genre,’ Linda Hutcheon explains how a certain reality conditions a particular literary change in the history of the novel:

Literature creates its criticism: a change in the language of novel theory was born out of the need to account for the fiction of Joyce, Proust, Pirandello, Virginia Woolf. Discussions began to centre around the concept of ‘subjective realism’, and usually they were based on the belief that a new epistemology, a new psychological view of reality had caused, or at least conditioned, the literary change. (1984: 46)

If the fiction of Joyce, Proust, Virginia Woolf, etc. imposed ‘subjective realism’, El Bezaz’s novel incorporates socio-political new realism to express criticism of Dutch multiculturality in times of extreme polarization. Naima captures how all neighbours express their subjective fears and insist on the exclusion of fetishized strangers or suspicious Others. She tells that ‘all neighbours hold their breath’ (Alle buren houden hun adem [184]), as they reject new buildings to be built around them to avoid the coming of new neighbours. This situation reinforces how the narrative is a subjective representation of the processes of inclusion and exclusion in this Vinex-space. Dutch multiculturality is about isolated ethnic groups, who all approach each other with fear, because of their ‘stranger cultures.’

Vinexvrouwen’s focus on the question of cultural difference challenges relativistic notions of the diversity of culture in Dutch multiculturality. Because of her problematic relationship with her neighbours, Naima suffers from depression: ‘I have a high risk of psychosis. But living in this neighbourhood is for me the major psychosis. I really cannot understand the people here.’ (‘Ik heb een grote kans op een psychose. Maar wonen in deze wijk is voor mij al éé grote psychose. Ik snap werkelijk niks van de mensen hier’ [187]). Naima even realizes that ‘people are now unique’ (Mensen zijn nu eenmaal uniek [187]). In other words, different cultural encounters need to understand each other’s beliefs, cultures and ethical norms if they want to live in harmony. Naim’s realization is reminiscent of the theorist Jean-Luc Nancy’s claims that the increasing heterogeneity and cultural diversity in postcolonial Europe allows us to realize that being means ‘being singular plural.’ It means that we realize that ‘not only are all people different but they are also all different from one another,’ unique and singular (2000: 8). According to Nancy, ‘singularity’ is a concept that helps to envision a ‘we,’ which takes the coexistence of each and every singularity into account (10).

Nevertheless, El Bezaz’s novel develops a sense of Whitness versus Otherness, the ‘autochthonous’ Dutch versus ‘allochthonous’ migrants, the normal versus the suspicious. The process of embodiment (inclusion) and rejection (exclusion) of fetishized Others characterizes the politics of ‘stangering.’ Naima herself incarnates this process of embodiment and rejection: at first she expresses her reconciling attitude by stating that: ‘Neighbours are like family members, whom you have to live with, even if you would prefer to throw them off the highest flat’ (Buren zijn als familieleden; je moet ermee leren leven, ook al zou je ze het liefst van de allerhoogste flat af willen gooien [83]). Yet, her initiative to get to know some of her neighbours marks only ‘strangering’ instances. She comments on her visit to her new neighbour, a Surinamese black woman, as follows: ‘The woman looked at me as if she has to deal with a fool. But I consoled myself with the thought that I am an artist and that those are different than normal people.’ (De vrouw keek me aan alsof ze met een gek van doen had. Maar ik troostte mezelf met de gedachte dat ik een kunstenaar ben en die zijn anders dan gewone mensen [161]). Exchanging mutual feelings of strangerness, Naima considers the Suriname woman ‘as a figure who has a life of its own, and who is suspicious to the social standards of commonality or normality’ (Ahmed 2000: 5).

The difference between the normal and the suspicious is here socially sensed, as Naima justifies what makes this people abnormal: ‘Surinamese are even worse than native Dutch. They think they know it all better. Bunch of self-righteous … .’ (‘Die Surinamers zijn nog erger dan autochtone Nederlanders. Ze denken het allemaal beter te weten. Stelletje zelfingenomen … ’ [162]). This reinforces Gilroy’s idea that in multicultural societies people are faced with unrealistic or unwelcome obligation to dwell peaceably with aliens and strangers (2015: 2). Unfolding the rigid boundaries between neighbours of different ethnic background, the novel suggests that we should rethink how ‘the strangeness of strangers goes out of focus and other dimensions of a basic sameness can be acknowledged and made significant’, as Gilroy recommends (3).

This process of inclusion and exclusion is what the novel attempts to negotiate. Naima engages again in dialogue with some of her neighbours, but results in failure. During this process of engagement, Naima represents both ‘autochthons’ and ‘allochthons’ women-neighbours as anti-social, racist and intolerant. She narrates her unpleasant experiences with two other Dutch neighbours among whom P. and Sigrid: if her neighbour P. is very arrogant, unfriendly and intolerant woman, Sigrid is even dangerous as she accused Naima of robbing her new furniture. Through narrating these stories, Naima lays emphasis on how the proximity, or inclusion, of strange encounters is distrusting and threatening. While Naima’s best friend Paul said that neighbours’ quarrels are common, Naima responds in this way: ‘But no quarrel is worse than mine,’’ (‘Maar geen enkele ruzie is erger dan de mijne,’’ [107]). The protagonist’s self-criticism and self-reflection modify an all-too-negative image about her neighbours, as a step toward reconciliation with ‘fetishized figures.’ Through this self-criticism, the novel suggests that we can only avoid stranger fetishism ‘by examining the social relationships that are concealed by this very fetishism … we need to consider how the stranger is an effect of processes of inclusion and exclusion’ (Ahmed 2000: 6).

3. Negotiating Boundaries of Cultural Difference

In her introduction ‘Boundaries in the Age of Globalisation,’ Inge E. Boer theorizes the dynamic processes of cross-cultural representation in which boundaries are explicitly included. According to Boer, boundaries construction between nations divide peoples according to religions, ethnicities, cultures, sexes and so on, and then, to their exclusions (2006: 11). Boer is right to claim that people tend to focalize from the inside: ‘they divide between a ‘we’ that blocks or runs up against a ‘they;’ they invoke history as justification for the boundary and they construct (and reinforce existing) differences or similes to make sense of boundaries (78). El Bezaz’s novel negotiates boundaries within Dutch nation, boundaries that cannot be wished away, but need to be accepted and respected. For as Boer puts it, boundaries are ‘not lines, but spaces, not rigid but open to negotiation’ (13). Vinexvrouwen represent migrants’ cultural difference as ‘stranger cultures’ as a way of setting boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between Whitness and Otherness. It narrates neighbours’ mutual feelings of fear and pinpoints aspects of their dichotomized cultures.

If care ethics are positioned as ‘a radical mode of engagement and refusal’ (Bonde Thylstrup 2020: 20), El Bezaz’s novel engages a dialectical process of estrangement and embodiment with regard to migrants. It reflects on the Dutch public’s stance of not caring for migrants by strangering them, but also of attempting to embody/engage them in a White Vinex-space. Naima depicts positions where different and contrasting cultural visions about ‘caring for others’ come into play. She problematizes the concept of ‘care’ and hospitality in Dutch culture, as juxtaposed to Moroccan culture. While preparing with Sigrid for a party, Naima casts a critical eye on the way her Dutch neighbour makes a party:

About a week later I helped her [Sigrid] in the party-tent with the preparations for the party. I thought she wanted couscous and tagine or pasta from my part; but the main ingredients for a real Dutch party were according to her beer, beer, and more beer, and a slice of sausage, cheese or croquette. Anything else was not needed. ‘whoever is hungry will go home to eat. I am not a foodbank.’

I could only stare at her [Sigrid] stunningly.

‘did you tell me that you always serve a lot of food at parties?’

I nodded, so I am raised right.’

‘They are just neighbours, Naima. They also do not serve so much. Everybody acts as if we find each other kind, but I prefer to shoot them with a giant catapult towards Greenland. […]

They have never before invited me to a dinner. Oh, did you cut all the cheese into pieces?’

Obediently, I nodded.

Ruim een week later hielp ik haar in de partytent met de voorbereidingen van het feest. Ik dacht dat ze couscous en tajine wilde, of pasta voor mijn part, maar de belangrijkste ingrediënten voor een echt Hollands feest waren volgens haar bier, bier en nog meer bier en een plakje worst, kaas of een bitterbal. Meer was er niet nodig. ‘Wie honger heeft gaat maar thuis eten. Ik ben geen voedselbank.’

Ik kon haar alleen maar verbijsterd aanstaren.

‘Je vertelt me toch niet dat jullie wel altijd veel eten maken bij feesten?’

Ik knikte. ‘Zo ben ik nu eenmaal opgevoed.’

‘Het zijn maar buren, hoor Naima. Zoveel stellen ze nou ook weer niet voor. Iedereen doet alsof we elkaar aardig vinden, maar het liefst schiet ik ze met een reuzenkatapult richting Groenland. […]

Nooit eerder hebben ze me voor een etentje uitgenodigd. O, heb je trouwens alle kazen in stukken gesneden?’

Gehoorzaam knikte ik. (153)

This dialogue between Naima and Sigrid constructs a sense of Dutchness versus Moroccanness, of indifference versus generosity. Naima’s staring looks express her astonishment of the fact that the native Dutch people are not generous enough to show hospitality to their guests. They lack the ethics of care for their guests, let alone for strange migrants. In contrast to Naima’s cultural principle that care for guests is a value, Sigrid shows indifference to this Moroccan value of hospitality and solidarity. This narrative re-writes, then, tensions that exist between self-care and care for others, in Sylvia Federici’s words, to ‘pave the way to a world where care for others can become a creative task’ (2019: 184). Naima’s and Sigrid’s contrasting cultural values reinforce existing boundaries between Moroccan and Dutch cultures. This negotiation of Dutch and Moroccan cultures is an attempt to bridge the gap between cultural boundaries, and to chart the possibility to live with difference without being strangered and fetishised.

Vinexvrouwen narrates, thus, Dutch multiculturality as a way of re-imagining the nation itself, and as a potential lesson ‘on living with difference,’ in Gilroy’s terms (2015). Not only does Naima negotiate Dutch culture, but she also teaches her native Dutch friends about her homeland culture of Moroccaness. At her friend, Carola’s birthday party, while she was served a cup of coffee and a cookie with it, Naima was astonished by offering her only one cookie. If serving guests with a good amount of food is an act of care and hospitality in the Moroccan culture, caring for others is not an essential aspect of Dutchness. Carola’s aunt defended proudly Dutch people as follows: ‘Yes, we know that you really love sweet and too much food, but we are Calvinist,’ she said proudly. [‘Ja, we weten dat jullie heel erg van zoet houden en veel te veel eten, maar wij zijn calvinistisch,’ zei ze trots (105)]. Carola’s aunt explains further: ‘That means we are sober, hardworking people, as it should be.’ [‘Dat betekent dat we sobere, hardwerkende mensen zijn. Zoals het hoort’ (105)]. This conversation brings forth cultural boundaries between Dutchness versus Moroccaness: the productive, sober Dutch people versus the consuming, strange Moroccans. Naima does not counter Carola’s aunt, but she is aware that they are too economical and too cold with their guests, the fact which illustrates their self-care and their indifference toward others.

Through this contrasting native Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch characterization, the novel negotiates cultural boundaries, Otherness and strangeness. Naima’s narrated story in Dutch multiculturality brings to the fore the cultural values of care and hospitality which define her Moroccaness versus the self-care and coldness of Dutchness. In another episode, she recalls the memory of cultural shock as a migrant child while she was playing with her friend Carola at home. At a certain moment, Carola’s mother tells her that it is time for dinner and Naima takes a seat behind a plate, very curious how the cooking of her friend’s mother would look like. But the mother shocked Naima by urging her to go home because it is time for their dinner, explaining to her that guests are welcome only if invited:

‘You have to go home, because we are going to eat.’ (Carola’s mother)

‘But you said I could come here,’ I said bewildered and wondering whether I had done something bad. (Naima)

You are invited to come to play and not to come to dinner. These are two different things. This is something you have to learn. At six o’clock we the Dutch people have dinner. Guests can only come if we have invited them one or two weeks in advance. Is that not so with you?’ (mother)

I shacked my head. We do not do by appointments; whoever comes stays to eat. Recently there were also Jehovah’s Witnesses and my mother let them come in and then they have eaten couscous. Very nice people. But we do not understand who are Jehovah’s Witnesses exactly. (Naima)

Naima, you should go home now. (mother)

Deeply offended I got up, put on my coat and walked out. What were the Dutch still a rude people. (Naima)

‘Je moet naar huis, want we gaan eten.’

‘Maar ik mocht hiernaartoe komen,’ zei ik verbijsterd en vroeg me af of ik iets ergs had gedaan.

‘Je bent uitgenodigd om te komen spelen en niet om te komen eten. Dat zijn twee verschillende dingen. Dat moet je leren. Om zes uur eten wij Nederlanders. Gasten komen alleen als we ze een week of twee van tevoren hebben uitgenodigd. Gaat dat niet zo bij jullie?’

Ik schudde mijn hoofd. ‘Wij doen niet aan afspraken. Wie langskomt blijft eten. Onlangs waren er ook Jehova’s getuigen en mijn moeder liet ze pas gaan toen ze couscous hadden gegeten. Heel aardige mensen. Alleen begrepen we niet wat Jehova’s getuigen nou eigenlijk zijn.’

‘Naima, je moet nu naar huis.’

Diep beledigd stond ik op, trok mijn jas aan en liep naar buiten. Wat waren die Nederlanders toch een onbeschoft volk. (165–6)

Unlike a Dutch family, Naima would not expect from a Moroccan family to ask her to leave home at the time of dinner. Dutch normality is presented here as abnormal to Moroccan culture which gives esteem to the value of care and hospitality. Naima felt offended and embarrassed since according to her family guests are welcome anytime. Eventually, Naima realizes the warmth and the hospitality of a Moroccan family and reconciles her homeland culture and identity, as she deduces: ‘Foreigners were much cozier and warmer’ (Buitenlanders waren veel gezelliger en warmer [165–6]). By this statement, she expresses resistance to the Dutch coldness, self-care and lack of hospitality, and shows instead solidarity with her homeland culture and people. If the native Dutch women reject Muslim migrants as being fetishized strangers, Naima resists such politics of strangering by criticizing the intolerance of Dutch people, the coldness of their culture.

Vinexvrouwen is a creative engagement in preblematizing Dutch multiculturality and the question of migrants’ cultural difference. Even though the novel does not necessarily deconstruct mutual stereotypes, arrogant attitudes and racism, it raises awareness against them. The narrative suggests third spaces of interaction between ethnic, cultural and religious communities, where difference is negotiated and not ‘strangered’. As such, the novel squares with Adelson’s argument that a controversial work of art, as a nation’s culture, ‘actively seeks to negotiate changing values and attitudes towards a changing world’ (2001: 245). Indeed, the novel engages in contesting cultural values, different attitudes and in negotiating their boundaries. It represents migrants as ‘fetishised figures’ and their cultures as ‘stranger cultures’ as a way of reinforcing boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Nevertheless, the narrator resists setting rigid boundaries between different ethnic groups and their cultures, to be viewed as communities of fear. Rather, the novel suggests that boundaries are ‘not lines, but spaces, not rigid but open to negotiation,’ in third spaces of enunciation (Boer 2006: 13). The author’s negotiation of boundaries and her resistance to the discourse of ‘strangering’ illustrate the idea that ethnic or cultural boundaries cannot be wished away, but need to be tolerated.

Conclusion

El Bezaz’s autobiographical novel functions as a nation’s literary archive, where phases of solidarity and resistance are both tracked and imagined. Written in a hybrid form combining devices of new-realism and postmodern irony, the novel narrates the significance of Dutch multiculturality, where multiple identities, cultures and ethnicities come into contact. The narrative engages in negotiating Dutch multiculturality as a way of writing the nation and its socio-cultural history. By means of gendered practice of storytelling, the narrator charts her personal map of stories and memories marked by disappointment, disillusion and even depression. The narrator-protagonist reflects on everyday life in a White Vinex-environment, where neighbours of different ethnic background are fearful and hostile to each other. Muslim minorities of Turkish and Moroccan origin are represented as ‘communities of fear,’ with a religiously radical difference which appears to legitimize the White women’s discourse of exclusion, Islamophobia and racism. Contesting the emotions of fear and resentment in a White Vinex-space, the author restores the bond between storytelling and real experiences, and between the text and the extra-literary reality/ new realism.

The author’s narration of real stories in this Vinex-space unfolds the politics of ‘strangering’ of migrants and the ‘fetishization’ of their cultural difference. The novel’s representation of Dutch multiculturality displays stark polarization, mistrust and hostility between the native Dutch population and different ethnic groups. The ‘we’ of the nation is imagined and defined in the narrative against what Ahmed calls ‘stranger cultures,’ of those perceived as ‘fetishized strangers.’ Throughout the narrative, the dichotomy of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ the ‘allochthons’ versus ‘autochthon’ people, the ‘civilized’ native Dutch people versus the ‘barbarian’ migrants, is reflected upon, criticized and negotiated. Resisting such dichotomized mindset, the writer’s imagination seems highlighting Gilroy’s idea that we should focus on how ‘the strangeness of strangers goes out of focus and other dimensions of a basic sameness can be acknowledged and made significant’ (2015: 3). The novel’s critique highlights that a postnational imaginary presupposes the proximity of citizens of non-Dutch origin, instead of excluding them by ‘strangering’ them as being suspicious. Thus, the autobiographical narrative considers Dutch multiculturality as a rigorous concern that needs negotiation, as well as a serious dialogue and communication in order to reach tolerance and harmony between the White population and migrant minorities.

El Bezaz’s narrative suggests that to build bridges of dialogue and communication, we need to deconstruct the public’s ‘fetishized’ mindset towards the Other and to subvert prejudices and stereotypes, particularly towards Muslim migrants. The novel attempts to resist the politics of ‘strangering’ through understanding migrants’ cultural difference and including them in the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. As Ahmed proposes, we can only avoid ‘stranger fetishism’ ‘by examining the social relationships that are concealed by this very fetishism … we need to consider how the stranger is an effect of processes of inclusion and exclusion’ (2000: 6). Through her narrative imagination, El Bezaz pleads for a dynamic Dutch national identity that acknowledges its exotic, ‘fetishized’ migrants and recognizes their cultural difference. In other words, the novel’s negotiation of cultural boundaries and its resistance of the discourse of ‘strangering’ and exclusion illustrate the idea that ethnic or cultural difference cannot be wished away, but need to be accepted and respected. To this end, the autobiography negotiates cultural boundaries within a post-national framework as a way of searching for alternative ways of living with difference without becoming fearful and hostile. The novel rethinks, thus, Dutch multiculturality in a manner that insists on dialogue and negotiation of our rigid boundaries of cultural difference, appealing for third spaces of ethnic, cultural and religious communities.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).