02 Oct THE RISE OF POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM
IN THE NETHETRLANDS AND BELGIUM
Opinion Anke Tytgat
A woman is still far too often – even in the twenty-first century – underrepresented in a world where women are essential
Hello, I am Anke Tytgat, a student of Agogical Sciences at the Free University of Brussels – the capital city of Belgium: the small country where I was born and raised. I am currently doing an internship at Solidaritas Perempuan Kinasih Yogyakarta to open my heart and broaden my view of the world. My study discipline is well known for being “unknown” and this is mainly due to the minimal scope of this field of study because you can only study it in Brussels and nowhere else in the world.
The main goal of agogics is “to improve the world”. Of course, this sounds extremely ambitious – and, of course, very idealistic – yet this humane science tries to squeeze into the smallest flaws of society – and from that perspective – into politics as well. It is somewhat similar to “human sciences” with the only difference – a good difference, in my opinion – being that everyone who graduates has a different backpack of knowledge about the world. Thus, everyone can choose different electives from all of the disciplines taught at my university.
Last year, therefore, I also chose a philosophical subject, called “identity(s)”. This philosophical – but above all “human and also inspiring” – subject taught me a wide range of views of the world, both positive and negative. I learned how a person comes to identity formation. Unfortunately, we also learned that there are many Western philosophers who do not take into account the difficult word “intersectionality”. This word gives meaning to the different socio-cultural – as well as economic and perhaps even political – aspects of human life and therefore too often limits the philosophical view to the purely white dominant self-image of the West.
On the other hand, the professor wanted to avoid this problem by mainly discussing non-Western philosophers – or Western philosophers who (did) look critically at the dominant Western philosophy. Throughout the lessons of this unique subject, I have become more aware of several aspects of identity formation. After all, this is also what – in my opinion – is the purpose of learning: becoming aware of things you actually already know. This course gave me an impetus to look beyond Western philosophy and to be critical of the dominant thinking that was spread in Western society.
As a final assignment of this course, I had to write a thesis on the identity formation of “an” interesting group or person. This was my impetus to look beyond the dominant Western thinking and move toward feminist thinking-preferably decolonial/postcolonial thinking. In my quest to find an interesting person within this thinking, I found an interesting list of book tips on RoSa vzw – a Belgian organization dedicated to literature on women and gender studies. Because of this, my paper ventured into Gloria Wekker’s much-discussed book “White innocence: paradoxes of colonialism and race.
In all honesty, however, I must confess: I am still a Western girl of barely nineteen years old who wants to broaden her view of the world, but who still grew up in a Western European country. The fact that I even use the words “Western” and “non-Western” again indicates my positionality in the world.
The least I can do is be critical of my own thinking and learn from the experiences of life – as well as the experiences and knowledge that Solidaritas Perempuan Kinasih Yogyakarta will provide me through this internship period – and hope that one day dominant thinking will disappear. In this article, I will take you through the knowledge I have gained so far on this topic. This article is based on several critical thinkers towards Western thinking, as well as on the above-mentioned book ‘White Innocence’ by Gloria Wekker and on other various scientific as well as non-scientific articles.
Short history of feminism in Belgium
Feminism in Belgium – a fairly “white” movement according to others who share my opinion – emerged in 1830. Not coincidentally because that is also when Belgium came into being as an independent state. Before that and after the defeat of Napoleon (1815 to 1830), it formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands along with present-day Holland and Luxembourg (Ministerie van Algemene Zaken, n.d.). Of course, still throughout history there were a number of thinkers who philosophized about the position of women within society-especially the oppression of those same women. Belgium itself had already experienced four feminist waves – or periods – of tipping points until now. Only, there is still much disagreement among Belgian feminist thinkers about the term “wave”. After all, is it indeed a ‘new’ wave if in it we still find characteristics of the first feminist wave in Belgian feminism? From the Enlightenment onward – a period characterized in Western Europe by reason and the three rules: fraternity, equality and freedom – there were several feminist thinkers who challenged the dominant image of equality and freedom that characterized – well: mainly for men – that period. Feminist philosophical thought turned into an “emancipatory protest movement” in the nineteenth century. Within Belgian feminism there are also many other interpretations of – the same – feminism. For example, starting in the 1990s in Europe, black feminists criticized the visions of – dominant – white feminism. This dominant feminism generalized the image of a “white middle-class woman” seeking equality and – according to postcolonial feminism emerging in the mid-1970s – thus did not take into account at all the colonial past and the concept of intersectionality. For the sake of completeness, one should not lose sight of other movements such as ecofeminism and even Islamic and Muslim feminism. On the site of RoSa vzw, there are listed 11 different interpretations of feminism in Belgium (RoSa, n.d.).
The Eurocentric perspective that has permeated – even in Belgian feminism – creates – at least in my opinion – a distorted view of reality. Of course, you cannot look at reality ‘completely’ objectively; after all, you will always be influenced by the socialization and ideology in which you grow up. You can/may, of course, be critical of this view. This is also what encouraged me to look beyond the dominant Belgian – and perhaps even Western European – feminism. How do you develop your identity in a country where the past is often willfully “forgotten”? How do you develop your identity where the dominant self-image is ‘white’? More specifically, how do you do that as a ‘woman’ with a different skin color in a dominant ‘white’ feminist perspective? On the site of RoSa vzw,
I found a definition of postcolonial feminism in Belgium: “interpreting and breaking open the Eurocentric historical perspective on feminist theory and practice. According to postcolonial feminists, thanks to its position of power, the West has succeeded in constructing ‘feminism’ and reducing it to a monolithic, white movement” (RoSa vzw, n.d.).It thus seeks to break open the dominant white Eurocentric self-image and introduce the theory of “intersectionality”. Women are not underrepresented simply because they are “women” – there is even no such thing as a universal “woman”.
Decolonial feminism goes against the superiority thinking of Western self-image. One experiences different discrimination due to various social, cultural, economic, political… factors. Indeed, class, gender, salery … also plays a role in all these facets. Thus, these factors also play a role in a person’s identity development. According to decolonial feminism, you should look from different angles/crossroads and not from a universal image of women.
There are many thinkers who have developed theories or maybe even philosophies on this topic. She has made me aware of many inequalities that I was not – or only slightly – aware of before. This is due to the fact that I still live in a Eurocentric mindset. She discusses in her book that the colonial past does have a few – and read: a lot – of influence on the identity formation of a woman with a different skin color in the Netherlands.
Wekker is a Surinamese-Dutch socio-cultural anthropologist (Atria, n.d.). The short title of the book “White Innocence” may sound crazy – but amazingly – she puts forth a critique against the – what she calls – paradoxical white Dutch self-image – which sees itself as colorless and anti-racist. Ever since the start of colonialism, Europe has had a superior self-image of going to ‘help’ the ‘East’ and other continents (Salem, n.d.). However, the word ‘help’ here should be interpreted as ‘destroying’ or perhaps even creating ‘Separateness’.
Colonialism of Belgium
I took history classes in Belgium – read: from a Eurocentric perspective – which included colonialism. In this piece, I will give a brief overview of the colonialism of Belgium and a few examples of persistent racial and discriminatory structures in today’s Belgium and the Netherlands. At the end of the 15th century, the first – so-called – voyages of discovery of a series of european countries such as Spain and the United Kingdom began…. These voyages also meant – unfortunately – the beginning of the big wave of colonization led by several Western European countries (Geschiedenis Vandaag, n.d.). Belgium and the Netherlands, together with Luxembourg, were domed under the term “the United Kingdom of the Netherlands” from 1815 to 1830. From 1830, Belgium became an independent state – which would also begin colonization (Ministerie van Algemene Zaken, n.d.). Under the reign of Leopold I, Belgium – the second most industrialized country in Europe – began its colonization journey. Later, when a new king – Leopold II – arrived, he went a violent step further. Here began the horrific colonial events in the Congo. Resulting in the various inhuman acts of violence (Humanistisch Verbond, n.d.).
Gloria Wekker once used the words of Doc Rogers – a coach of the LA Clippers – as the title for her lecture at the 2021 NIAS conference (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 2021): ‘When a country does not love you back’. This is a feeling that – in my opinion – is common in Western Europe.
How can you develop an identity if a the country you grew up in – or even just a part of it – develops an identity equivalent to the dominant identity? According to her, the racialized events in the Netherlands are still because of the colonial past. From then on, the West had created an image in the world that was dominant and to which everyone had to conform otherwise you were seen as inferior. Gloria Wekker tried to analyze this – superior – image by dissecting the “cultural archive” – a word introduced by Eduard Saïd. Eduard Saïd mentioned in his Orientalism that the West needs the “Other” – in other words: the inferior Other – to determine its own identity – read: superior identity (Jans, 2022).
The Cultural Archive summarizes Gloria as, “a repository of ideas, practices and feelings, that which is between our ears, in our hearts and minds, regarding race, based on four hundred years of imperial rule” (Wekker, 2020, p. 49). During the colonial period of the Netherlands, superiority and – equally – inferiority human images were developed. In the colony, the white Dutch became “the boss”. The ideas were then also continued in the Netherlands. Thus, a tradition of Sinterklaas – a white old man with nice clothes – served by a Black playful man emerged in the Netherlands and Belgium (Wekker, 2020).
Meanwhile, around this tradition – in my opinion: luckily enough – much has been discussed. You have Dutchmen and Belgians who do not want to renounce this tradition but there are also a lot of people who renounce this tradition and put it in a different jacket. There are still numerous examples I can give about constructs in the colonial past that are still -shared- in the cultural archive today. Gloria does base her argument only on the Netherlands, but – in my opinion – many of her theories also apply to Belgium (the neighboring country).
The influence of colonialism on the cultural archive has ensured that we now live in a society in which being white – and preferably male – is seen as normal so that anyone who deviates from it – especially therefore women (and men) of color – is portrayed as ‘the other’ and is therefore also approached differently. But Moglen would be saying here that when the West defines the “Other” the West also defines itself as the “Other” of the “Other” (Wekker, 2020, p.64). This is to say that even though white people pretend to be neutral – and therefore have stripped themselves of the racial aspect – they still deeply define themselves as a racial entity.
All this causes feminism to be misinterpreted in White Dutch – I think, also Belgian – society. The White woman saw herself – superiorly – as normal, which made it forget that some women can be decriminalized not once, twice but three times and even more in different areas of human life intersectionality. To conclude on this topic, I would like to give another quote from Emmanuel Levinas as I also did in my paper: ‘It is not you who gives the world a place, but it is the Other, who addresses you, appeals to you and gives you a place.’ (Jansen, n.d.).
Conclusie
The colonial past still leaves huge footprints in both the colony and the colonizing country. It is regrettable to face this. So I hope – very idealistically – that one day all the dominant images will be gone. And that we no longer have to express ourselves and feel discriminated against on the basis of skin color – as well as that the designation of Western or non-Western may go away. Despite this utopia, I think we still have a very long way to go. In any case, I am already trying to be critical of the ideas that are imposed on me in Belgium. Please note that this opinion piece is based on information that supports my opinion. There is also a lot of information that will refute or question this opinion. Be critical. Lastly, I hope that in the future everyone will be understood as an equal human being.
Bibliography
Atria. (n.d.). Buitengewoon hoogleraar ‘Gender en Etniciteit.’ Atria. https://atria.nl/haargeschiedenis/leren-en-scholing/buitengewoon-hoogleraar-gender-en-etniciteit/
Geschiedenis Vandaag. (n.d.). Een veranderende wereld. Geschiedenis Vandaag. https://www.geschiedenisvandaag.nu/een-veranderende-wereld/#:~:text=In%20augustus%201492%20vertrok%20Christoffel,langs%20de%20kust%20van%20Afrika.
Humanistisch Verbond. (n.d.). Koloniaal België. Humanistisch Verbond. https://www.humanistischverbond.be/kritisch-lezen/624/koloniaal-belgie/
Jans, E. (2022, 23 mei). Het humanisme van Edward Said. Lava. https://lavamedia.be/het-humanisme-van-edward-said/
Jansen, C. (n.d.). De Ander. Corine Jansen. https://corinejansen.com/2017/06/30/de-ander/
Ministerie van Algemene Zaken. (n.d.). Koninkrijk der Nederlanden. Het Koninklijk Huis. https://www.koninklijkhuis.nl/onderwerpen/koninkrijk-der-nederlanden
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Gloria Wekker “When a Country
does not love you back” NIAS Conference on Studies of Belonging [Video]. YouTube.
RoSa. (n.d.). https://www.rosavzw.be/nl/
RoSa. (n.d.). Postkoloniaal feminisme. RoSa Vzw. https://www.rosavzw.be/nl/themas/feminisme/feministische-stromingen/postkoloniaal-feminisme
Salem, S. (n.d.). Sara Salem: ‘Een beschaafd Westen tegen een onbeschaafd Oosten: dat is nog steeds het discours.’ MO* Magazine. https://www.mo.be/interview/een-beschaafd-westen-tegen-een-onbeschaafd-oosten-dat-nog-steeds-het-discours
Wekker, G. (2020). Witte onschuld: Paradoxen van kolonialisme en ras (Herziene editie). Amsterdam University Press.
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