Colonial Memory Colonial Memory Contemporary Women’s Travel Writing in Britain and the Netherlands Sarah De Mul Amsterdam University Press The publication of this book is made possible by a grant from the Research Foun- dation Flaunders Cover illustration: Jens Pée Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: Japes: JAPES, Amsterdam isbn 978 90 8964 293 6 e-isbn 978 90 4851 385 7 nur 617 © Sarah De Mul /Amsterdam University Press, 2011 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 ‘Yesterday does not go by’ Chapter 1 17 A Trip Down Memory Lane. Colonial Memory in Women’s Travel Writing Chapter 2 33 Women’s Memory of Rhodesia, the Dutch East Indies and British and Dutch Cultures of Colonial Remembrance Chapter 3 55 Nostalgic Memory in Aya Zikken’s Terug naar de atlasvlinder Chapter 4 81 Indo Postmemory in Marion Bloem’s Muggen, mensen olifanten Chapter 5 103 Everday Memory in Doris Lessing’s African Laughter Conclusion 123 Notes 131 Works Cited 159 Index 177 5 Acknowledgements I have been so fortunate to share the intellectual journey of this book with a range of people to whom I am particularly grateful. I thank Vivian Liska and Isabel Hov- ing, who led me on the research path when I was a student of Germanic litera- tures at the University of Antwerp, and who still are now, important examples in this profession. The research project that transmuted into this book was con- ducted under the guidance of another pair of warm-hearted and sharp women, Pamela Pattynama and Frances Gouda, whose work on the literatures and history of the Dutch East Indies I am greatly indebted to. I thank Elleke Boehmer for that rainy day in Nottingham in January 2003, when I first discovered that the interna- tionally known postcolonial scholar whose relentless vigour and elegant elo- quence I so admire has in fact Dutch as her mother tongue; also for sharing an interest in establishing an encounter between postcolonial theoretical discourses and the cultures and literatures of the Low Countries, which has been important to me not only in this but also in subsequent projects. I owe Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, the intellectual climate where this book belongs. In particular I thank Mieke Bal, Mireille Rosello, Murat Ayde- mir and Eloe Kingma. I thank Tim Youngs, for receiving me with great friendli- ness at the Centre for Travel Writing Studies at the University of Nottingham Trent and for his enthusiasm for travel writing and his longstanding expertise. I also owe thanks to Marita Matthysen, Bert Paasman and Thomas Vaessens, at the Department of Dutch at the University of Amsterdam. I thank Ernst van Alphen and the other members of the Department of Literary Studies at Leiden University for providing me with an enjoyable and inspiring home during my Rubicon post- doctoral research in 2008. After returning back to Belgium, Theo D’haen was the pleasant host who opened the doors of the University of Leuven. Maaike Meijer, Ena Jansen and Ieme van der Poel were so kind to offer their insightful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. Though we met briefly, I have benefited much from Charles Forsdick’s suggestions on the sensory in travel writing, and from Graham Huggan’s critique of the postcolonial market. Anja Meulenbelt’s and Frank Westerman’s sincere interest in my project was truly enjoyable and kept on reminding me of the reasons for my academic pursuits. Saskia Lourens’ and Gary Price’s swift and meticulous editing was truly priceless. Over the years, I have enjoyed the generous support of a number of institutions and grants. I am particularly indebted to The Netherlands Organisation for Scien- tific Research for making it possible to conduct the four-year research project that 7 went into this book and for allowing me to expand it during a Rubicon postdoc- toral fellowship. During my years as a postdoctoral fellow of The Research Foun- dation Flanders, I was able to finalise and publish the manuscript. I’m grateful to the editors and anonymous readers of the European Journal of Women’s Studies for helping me make Chapter 5 of the book stronger and for permission to reprint it in revised form. An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared in Essays in Migratory Aesthetics edited by Sam Durrant and Catherine M. Lord and an expanded form of the paragraphs about Tempo Doeloe discourse in Chapter 3 was published in Memory Studies. I am grateful to the people with whom I could share the daily joys and sorrows of writing and living in Amsterdam. Special mention goes to Roel van den Oever, Marie-Louise Jansen and Margriet van Heesch of the Belle van Zuylen institute and Maria Boletsi, Emmanuelle Radar, Ihab Saloul, Pieter Verstraete, Stephan Besser, Noa Roei, Carolyn Birdsall, Eliza Steinbock at ASCA. I cannot express how much I am indebted to Begüm Firat and Sonja van Wichelen for their unre- mitting camaraderie and for helping me in more ways than I can tell, also from their current locations in Istanbul and Sidney. I thank Liesbeth Minnaard and Liesbeth Bekers, for their gift of combining work and friendship effortlessly. After my return to Belgium, I am grateful to have found a paradigmatic circle including Nadia Fadil, Sarah Bracke, Meryem Kanmaz, Bambi Ceuppens, Karel Arnaut. Jens Pée and Katelijne Meeusen were splendid neighbours during the final stages of writing in Antwerp. I cannot thank them enough for their steady interest and relentless support of my various ventures into literature, in addition to copy-edit- ing and making the cover photograph of this book. Most gratitude goes to my brother and to my parents, for patiently loving me, and for educating me to pursue the life that I have imagined. I thank Nikolas, for being my fellow traveller on the yellow big road between our dwellings in Lon- don, Donostia, Amsterdam and Antwerp; for bringing home to me how to ap- preciate the lightness of being, while continuing to dream of a better world. And finally, I am grateful to our little kabouter Lidewei, born months before this book went into print. 8 colonial memory Introduction ‘Yesterday does not go by’ “Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house – the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture – must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.” Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things. Gisteren gaat niet voorbij (Yesterday does not go by) is the title of a novel written in 1973 by the Dutch female author Aya Zikken.1 Against the background of a reunion gathering, the plot centres around two Dutch ladies who recollect their colonial childhood. They were in the Dutch East Indies (colonial Indonesia) during the early twentieth century. Zikken has reworked memories of the Dutch East Indies in numerous literary works, such as De atlasvlinder (1958), Raméh, verslag van een liefde (1968), Gisteren gaat niet voorbij (1973), Landing op Kalabahi (1996) and Indische jaren (2001).2 She has also written a large body of travel writing about Indonesia, for instance Eilanden van vroeger (1982), Drieluik Sumatra (1995) and Terug naar de atlasvlinder (1982).3 Since her repatriation to the Netherlands on the eve of the Second World War and the Indonesian struggle for independence, Aya Zikken has continuously returned to her autobiographical childhood experiences in colo- nial Indonesia through writing, travelling and writing about travel. Seen in the post-imperial context of the second part of the twentieth century, Aya Zikken is by no means the only Dutch author who has returned to colonial- ism in her work. Although official historical records often reveal reluctance on the part of contemporary Dutch society to confront the ways in which colonialism has far outlived decolonisation, the desire to return to the colonial past is ever so present. In Britain also, it is striking that so many texts repeatedly return to scenes of colonialism, to produce a plethora of modes, motives, and meanings. The sheer range of these meanings can be glimpsed when we consider the var- ious plots about the colonial past that are in circulation today. Often inherited from the past, many of these plots have seemingly disappeared, only to resurface in commodified forms on the Western global market: fashionable Oriental gar- ments, African drum music festivals, belly dance courses, the allure of exotic is- 9 lands in reality-TV shows, the thrill of adventure tourist holidays, the 2002 com- memoration of the foundation of the Dutch East Indies Company four hundred years ago in Holland, the proliferation of slave monuments, the promotion of colonial tourist sites such as het Oost-Indische huis, documentaries about postcolo- nial migrants seeking their roots, such as Motherland: A Genetic Journey, colonial film epics such as A Passage to India or Gordel van Smaragd, the Multatuli musical and so on. It is reasonable to say that the colonial past haunts a wide range of Western cultural practices and production today as a ghost in various obvious and obscure guises – in tourism, films, literature, monuments and museums. Taken together, the wide range of these Western instances of colonial recollection demonstrate that colonialism has always carried diverse and conflicting associations for a vari- ety of people, regardless of how official historical narratives have portrayed colo- nialism, imperialism and European expansion.4 In this study, I will examine the phenomenon of the return to the colonial past in late twentieth-century Britain and the Netherlands.