Discord Consensus

once a bed of red and orange cannas was. Someone is sitting there,
squatting, digging through the soil.
‘Now you shouldn’t look!’ Non suddenly says [. . .] I cannot
take my eyes off the crouching figure, a woman whose face remains
hidden behind her hair, but her posture and movements are suddenly
worryingly familiar [. . .] once again I look at the house, but
now the spot near the wall is empty and I realise that my mother
had not really been sitting there, just a while ago.
The ghost of Herma’s mother, killed during the bersiap (violence directed
at the Dutch in Indonesia after the proclamation of independence), is
postcolonial: it moves between the remnants of colonisation and the
political violence that flared up after decolonisation. This appearance
is reminiscent of Bhabha’s ideas of the postcolonial ‘unhomely’. Bhabha
discusses Morrison’s Beloved, in which the ghost of a former slave’s
daughter serves as a constant reminder of the very personal and political
violence of slavery. Bhabha appreciates that Morrison turns the act
of narration of Beloved into an ethical act whilst ‘keep[ing] the reader
preoccupied with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being
supplied a controlled diet of the incredible political world’. 33
Haasse, like Morrison, opens up the present of narration in
Sleuteloog to a resonating colonial past: something that is both personal
and political haunts Herma’s narratives about her ‘Indische’ friend
Dee. It is striking that both the Dutch Herma and the mixed-​race aunt
Non share this ‘unhomely’ experience: their ability to perceive the
‘unhome ly’ crosses colonialist racial categories. Their present is defined
by many shared violent pasts: the violent unrest after Indonesia claimed
independence as well as the many occurrences of discrimination and
violence suffered during colonial times. I find it telling that the ghost of
Herma’s Dutch mother only appears once, very briefly. Her ‘unhomely’
appearance in Sleuteloog seems to hint at many more violent incidents
when ‘Indische’ personal and political histories entwined. With this
postcolonial apparition, Haasse lifts the ghost appearance from its
stereo typical ‘Indische’ literary setting and situates it in colonial politics.
Though most Dutch critics anno 2002 respond positively to
Sleuteloog, they do not discuss the postcolonial elements identified
here: the author Mijers and the ‘unhomely’ appearance of Herma’s
mother. They never reflect on what is to date considered ‘Indisch’ in the
Netherlands. Haasse, on the other hand, highlights stereotypical elements
of rigid colonial ‘Indische’ literature, and playfully interacts with
and criticises these elements in Sleuteloog.
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DISCORD AND CONSENSUS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1700–​2000