Discord Consensus

Mijers’s imagined ‘birth right’ and ‘Indonesian grandmother’ provide
him with a strict identity in the post-​colonial Netherlands. Retreating
into this set identity, he creates a colonial vacuum within the Dutch literary
field after decolonisation. ‘Indisch’ for Mijers as well as Nieuwenhuys
seems a rigid political identity that can be used to one’s own advantage.
The critically-​aware postcolonial real writer Haasse, on the other
hand, reaches out of the unity of the novel. With the staged colonial
author Mijers, Haasse invites readers to reflect upon a shared colonial
past and how this past relates to more complex identities in our post-​
colonial society. These are relevant questions, especially at the time of
writing Sleuteloog, in the early 2000s, when increasingly right-​wing politics
made migration and religious fundamentalism central themes to
the political debate. The novel questions how identities are used and put
to use in the Netherlands to date –​politically and culturally. The fact
that this is not picked up in contemporary criticism tells us a great deal
about the attitudes of the cultural elite in the Netherlands.
The second postcolonial element I would like to draw attention
to is the haunting of Sleuteloog’s narrative by ghosts. Haasse describes
some mysterious ghosts’ appearances. Ghosts are a typical ‘Indische’
aspect in Dutch literature: scary, inexplicable apparitions occur in, for
example, Goena-​goena by P. A. Daum (1887) and De Stille Kracht by
Louis Couperus (1900). These are Orientalist themes, suggesting that
the supposedly inferior culture of the colonised Indies is different and
inexplicable to the superior, rational Dutch coloniser. Haasse’s ghost
appearances, however, are different. When Herma revisits her old family
home in Indonesia with Dee’s aunt Non, after the decolonisation, the
following happens:
Het huis is bewoond, maar ik zie geen mens. Toch wel: er beweegt
iets bij een zijmuur, op een kale plek, ooit een perk vol rode en oranjegele
canna’s. Er zit daar iemand gehurkt in de aarde te wroeten.
‘Nu moet jij niet kijken!’ zegt Non plotseling [. . .] Ik kan mijn
blik niet afwenden van de hurkende gestalte, een vrouw wier
gezicht verborgen blijft achter haar neerhangende haren, maar
die me in houding en beweging plotseling verontrustend bekend
voortkomt [. . .] weer kijk ik om naar het huis, maar nu is de plek bij
de muur leeg en ik besef dat daar zojuist ook niet echt mijn moeder
gezeten heeft. (Sleuteloog, pp. 124, 125) 32
Though the house is inhabited, I cannot see anyone. Or . . . something
moves, over there, close to a sidewall, a bare spot where
‘A sort of wishful dream’ 129