Discord Consensus

The Twins (De tweeling), which contrasts Dutch and German experiences
of the Second World War. By comparing the movie with the novel,
Watson assesses how the priorities of heritage cinema led to fundamental
plot changes, transforming De Loo’s text, which challenged established
narratives of Dutch wartime history, into one that maintains traditional
views of the past. The film’s reinstating of a ‘consensus of blame’ is most
strongly discernible in the largely missing portrayal of the German wartime
experience that played such an important role in the novel, and in
the portrayal of the German character Anna, whose culpability is exaggerated
by filmic as well as narrative devices. Moreover, the choice to
adapt The Twins in the form of a romance emphasises cultural memories
of Dutch wartime suffering, and reveals heritage cinema’s dual commitment
to presenting an easily digestible view of national history to both
national and international audiences.
Marijn Molema’s (Leeuwarden) contribution focuses on the process
of consensus-​building within the domain of regional development.
It concentrates on economic policies in the Dutch–​German border
region and analyses the similarities and differences in the policy-​
making process. In the 1950s and 1960s, regional economic policies
flourished on both sides of the border, when industrial subsidies and
infrastructure investments were provided to help the economic development
of these regions that were lagging behind the standards of
national growth. Molema investigates this post-​war history of regional
policy from a comparative and border studies perspective, using the
northern Netherlands and north-​west Germany as examples. Similar
patterns in Dutch and German regions point to a European consensus
on how to develop remote and supposedly ‘backward’ regions.
Suzie Holdsworth (Sheffield) investigates the language policy of
the European Union and its governing principle of ‘multiple authenticity’,
the validity of all linguistic versions alike, although in reality
most documents are drafted in English first and most other linguistic
versions are the product of hybrid translational procedures. By
examining the phenomenon of hybridity in relation to Dutch language
production, she problematises the notions of multiple authenticity
and hybridity, as well as conceptual relationships between Dutch and
English, French and German in a discourse narrative on security, and
points out the consequences of multiple authenticity for discourse content
and the stability of institutional voice at the multilingual interface
of discourse.
It remains to express our gratitude to the many helpers the ALCS
conference had, especially to Josephine Salverda from the UCL Centre
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DISCORD AND CONSENSUS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1700–​2000