Books by Liesbeth Minnaard
Palgrave Macmillan , 2020
See here for more information and a download link to the OPEN ACCESS introduction of the volume:
... more See here for more information and a download link to the OPEN ACCESS introduction of the volume:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-36415-1?fbclid=IwAR2FCJijPN1hZ1bUjYrQsOxiGqmBAlK9XfJ6QiABDWKBdz7QEL7F49EzpS8
This edited volume rethinks crisis in relation to critique through the prism of various declared ‘crises’ in the Mediterranean: the refugee crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the Arab Spring, the Palestinian question, and others. With contributions from cultural, literary, film, and migration studies and sociology, this book shifts attention from Europe to the Mediterranean as a site not only of intersecting crises, but a breeding ground for new cultures of critique, visions of futurity, and radical imaginaries shaped through or against frameworks of crisis. If crisis rhetoric today serves populist, xenophobic or anti-democratic agendas, can the concept crisis still do the work of critique or partake in transformative languages by scholars, artists, and activists? Or should we forge different vocabularies to understand present realities? This collection explores alternative mobilizations of crisis and forms of art, cinema, literature, and cultural practices across the Mediterranean that disengage from dominant crisis narratives.
In the globalised world of today, traditional definitions of national Self and national Other no ... more In the globalised world of today, traditional definitions of national Self and national Other no longer hold. The unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch societies demands a thorough rethinking of national boundaries on several levels. This book examines how literature of migration intervenes in public discourses on multiculturality in Germany and the Netherlands, epitomised in the strikingly parallel debates on the ‘German Leitkultur’ and the Dutch ‘multicultural drama’ in the year 2000. By juxtaposing detailed analyses of literary work by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu and the Moroccan-Dutch writers Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza, New Germans, New Dutch offers crucial insights into the specific ways in which this literature negotiates its national context of writing. This book demonstrates how German literature of migration seeks alternative forms of community outside the national parameters, whereas the Dutch literature negotiates difference and re-imagines Dutchness within the national framework.
![Research paper thumbnail of De lichtheid van literatuur: Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving [The lightness of literature: Engagement in the multicultural society]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
De lichtheid van literatuur (The lightness of literature) is a passionate plea for the social re... more De lichtheid van literatuur (The lightness of literature) is a passionate plea for the social relevance of literature. The book delves into an age-old debate about literature and social engagement, which has recently been reinvigorated in Dutch literary studies. But it centers specifically on literature’s function in the current debate on the multicultural society – one of the most pressing issues in Holland and Belgium. The authors argue that literature can play an indispensable role in this debate precisely due to its ability to convey complexity. Discussions about multiculturalism often resort to simplification. Certain themes and rhetorical strategies are recurring: the theme of menace and impending doom, the desire for a supposedly lost innocence, and cultural stereotypes, such as the ‘common man’ and the barbarian. Through analyses of recently published Dutch and Flemish literary works, this book offers an insight into the background and implications of such popular stereotypes and modes of thinking.
Is there an alternative to contemporary populism and oversimplification? The authors of De lichtheid van literatuur believe there is. Literature uses a different language to convey our multicultural realities, a language that is figurative, playful, fictive, and produces multilayered meanings. The non-serious language of literature does not diminish its social relevance, but marks the force of its intervention in the social field. The transformative character of literary language takes effect not despite, but because of its difference from public rhetoric: its unbearable lightness, which can have dead serious implications for society without being serious or making truth-claims.
Through their readings of literary works, the authors formulate a new vision on the multicultural society in which the complexity of language, imagination, and reality take center stage.
Challenging the Myth of Monolingualism, 2015
Literature, Language and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, 2013
Preface xiii We also owe thanks to our meticulous and patient proofreader Tim Yaczo and the serie... more Preface xiii We also owe thanks to our meticulous and patient proofreader Tim Yaczo and the series-editor Dr. Cedric Barfoot. They not only brushed up our English so as to meet the academic Anglophone norm and standard, but also advised us on terminology matters (such as how to translate-or not-the controversial but often-used Dutch term "allochtoon" that has no real equivalent in the English language). "MULTICULTURAL LITERATURES" IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE WOLFGANG BEHSCHNITT AND MAGNUS NILSSON "Multicultural literatures" as international literatures "Multicultural literatures"-that is, literatures written, read, and discussed in the context of migration, multiculturalism and multilingualism-must, today without doubt, be considered an international phenomenon. Consequently, research on these literatures and matters must adopt an international perspective. Ulrich Beck states convincingly in his The Cosmopolitan Vision that the transnational reality of migration today requires a transgression of national borders on the part of critical research as well. 1 Why, then, do we in this volume restrict our view to the situation of multicultural literatures in certain nation states? And, moreover, why do we choose to focus on countries like Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Flanders (the last, though not being a state, a region with a strong consciousness of national independence)? They all seem of peripheral significance in the global context of migration and literature, considering their moderate size and population, their minor political and economic influence, the limited scope of their languages and literatures, and, above all, the comparatively small number of literary texts which pertain to the field of multicultural and multilingual literature. Does not such an approach risk relapsing to bygone times when Comparative Literature meant enhancing national particularities rather than questioning them? Not to mention the additional risk that, in principle, transnational literatures, literatures of
Articles and Chapters by Liesbeth Minnaard
Nederlandse Letterkunde, 26, 2/3, 223-239, 2021
This contribution takes the striking near-absence of intercultural and post-/ colonial issues fro... more This contribution takes the striking near-absence of intercultural and post-/ colonial issues from the first twenty-five editions of the journal Nederlandse letterkunde as the starting-point for a reflection on the monocultural focus and dazzling whiteness of the study of Dutch literature more in general. It starts with an overview of the origination of the debate about diversity within Dutch literature in the 1990's, after which it continues to excavate three specific aspects of this debate and the racial mechanisms that play a role in this. First of all, it discusses the compartimentalisation of both Neerlandophone migration and postcolonial literature itself, and the study of this literature. Second, it examines the exoticization of 'foreign-Dutch' writers vis-à-vis their invisibility. And third, it analyzes several expressions of Dutch innocence and white victimhood. The contribution concludes with a plea to exchange the Dutch ideology of color-blindness, that works to cover up white privileges, for a form of critical race studies that addresses the multi-layered-ness of Dutch diversity, including that of whiteness.
De Indische Letteren herlezen, Jacqueline Bel, Rick Honings, and Coen van ’t Veer (eds.), Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2021., 2021
Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een ge... more Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen of enige andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schri elijke toestemming van de uitgever. Er is naar gestreefd alle copyrights van de in deze uitgave opgenomen illustraties te achterhalen. Aan hen die desondanks menen alsnog rechten te kunnen doen gelden, wordt geadviseerd contact op te nemen met de uitgever. Deze publicatie is mogelijk gemaakt door een nanciële bijdrage van: Boekenfonds Elisabeth Grent/F.J.A.M. van der Helm Jaap Harten Fonds J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde (KITLV) Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) M.A.O.C. Gravin van Bylandt Stichting 1 Klewangwettende gezangen en knevelarij: Multatuli Jacqueline Bel 2 'Minacht mij niet omdat ik slechts een vrouw ben!': Mina Kruseman Petra Boudewijn 3 Sneeuwwitte krullen, gitzwarte vlechten: Melati van Java Nick Tomberge 4 'Ziet ge niet in dat al wat inlander, al wat hal loed is, den blanke haten moet?': Annie Foore Rianti Manullang & Floor Naber 5 'Hij blijft tegenover de Inlander een rasechte koloniaal': P.A. Daum Rick Honings 6 Mensen en (hun) natuur in Indië: Thérèse Hoven Marijke Denger 7 Van diepe angst en stil genot: Louis Couperus Elleke Boehmer & Coen van 't Veer 20 'Eigenlijk is het allemaal pas gisteren gebeurd': F. Springer Erica van Boven
Nederlandse Letterkunde 24 (2), 2019
'Long live woman and her freedom. It is indecent to gurgle.' Muslims, masculinity and irony in Ha... more 'Long live woman and her freedom. It is indecent to gurgle.' Muslims, masculinity and irony in Hafid Bouazza's work This article sets out to scrutinize the world of difference that lies between Hafid Bouazza's story-collection De voeten van Abdullah from 1996, and his collection of essays De akker en de mantel from 2015. It does so by means of a critical re-reading of Bouazza's celebrated 1996 debut, a work that at that time was primarily read as a tongue-in-cheek depiction of rural Muslim life. This re-reading positions De voeten van Abdullah in a 'pre-post-erous' relation to Bouazza's later, Islam-critical, if not Islamophobic writing. This article's comparative analysis of both works focuses in particular on the representation of Muslim masculinity and of the supposed threat that this particular masculinity poses to the position of women in society. As I will argue it is the transideological and elusive force of irony in Bouazza's stories that makes them escape any final determination. The 'pre-post-erous' juxtaposition of the two works, however, not only reveals their ideological and historical situ-atedness, but also that of their readers/readings.
TNTL / Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2020
The so-called refugee crisis has triggered manifold responses in the field of European art and li... more The so-called refugee crisis has triggered manifold responses in the field of European art and literature. This paper discusses two works by the Dutch writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer as examples of Dutch “refugee crisis literature”: his highly acclaimed novel La Superba (2013) and the short-story “Fatou yo” that was published in the text-collection Gelukszoekers (2015), but that is actually also a fragment from the aforementioned novel. I start my comparative discussion of these two texts by exploring the challenges and pitfalls in representing refugees in literature more in general, focusing on the seemingly inescapable trope of refugee victimhood and the humanitarian and empathic mind-set that “refugee crisis literature” mostly requires from its reader. Then I embark on an analysis of the two texts and of the way in which, as I will demonstrate, the texts position and, ultimately, manipulate their empathic reader. I will argue that the discomfort that results from this manipulation is considerably more effective within the frame-work of La Superba than within the Gelukszoekers- collection, despite the latter’s explicitly activist agenda.
From Crisis to Critique: Languages of Resistance, Transformation, and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes. , 2020
Taking the recent omnipresence of crisis rhetoric around the Mediterranean as a starting point, t... more Taking the recent omnipresence of crisis rhetoric around the Mediterranean as a starting point, the introduction lays out the main terms of this collection—crisis and critique—in their interrelation, as it emerges through the matrix of various declared crises in the Mediterranean. If today’s crisis rhetoric often works to restrict political choices and the imagination of alternative futures, can the concept crisis still do the work of critique or produce alternative modes of representation that can voice marginalized subjectivities and liminal experiences? Can crisis become part of contrarian or transformative languages by scholars, activists, and artists or should we forge different grammars to understand present realities in the region? Boletsi, Houwen, and Minnaard unpack the concept crisis and its operations alongside the concept of critique in our professed “postcritical times.” Underscoring the diagnostic rigor of critique in approaches to crisis-frameworks, they plead for critical practices that unravel through forms of translation and comparison rather than through hierarchical models or intellectual detachment. The authors finally revisit the Mediterranean as a cultural, political, and imaginary space and call for a de-centering of discussions around recently declared crises from Europe to the Mediterranean. By outlining each contribution to this collection, they project the region not only as a hotbed of crises, but also as a breeding ground for new cultures of critique, decolonization, resistance to the governmentality of crisis, and alternative visions of futurity.
Languages of Resistance, Transformation, and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes. From Crisis to Critique, 2020
The name Lampedusa resonates meaning in multiple ways. Located at the outskirts of the European U... more The name Lampedusa resonates meaning in multiple ways. Located at the outskirts of the European Union and place of refuge for a large number of refugees, the Mediterranean island Lampedusa has not only become a contemporary symbol for the so-called European refugee crisis, but also for the dramatic failure of the European Union’s current border and migration policy. This chapter questions and opposes the current interpretation of Lampedusa as a problematic and worrisome site at the European margins, and argues that Lampedusa should rather be seen as a heterotopian space at the heart of Europe and read as symptomatic for the European Union’s in many respects faltering neoliberal politics. It elaborates on this idea by analyzing the theatre text Lampedusa (2015) by the acclaimed young British playwright Anders Lustgarten. The chapter demonstrates how this Lampedusa brings two individuals’ struggles to endure the specific situations of ‘crisis’ they find themselves in together and prompts its readers to think about their narratives as “touching tales” – touching in the sense of equally emotionally charged (tales of insecurity, pain, loss, and fear) but also, importantly, touching in the sense of bordering on each other and interconnected in pivotal ways.
FKW: Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur, 2019
The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations... more The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors. Many of these representations depict migrants as suspects and border crossings as uncontrollable. The (bilingual) 66th issue of FKW examines a range of artistic interventions in European ‘refugee crisis’ rhetoric from the fields of literature, visual art, film, and theatre and reflects on the ways in which these art-works do – or do not – succeed in providing new grammars and alternative imaginations of the present.
Have a look at the complete issue or the separate contributions on: www.fkw-journal.de
De lichtheid van literatuur. Engagement in de multiculturele samenleving, 2015
Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers Since 1945. Fourteen National Contexts in Europe and Beyond, 2018
Editors: Wiebke Sievers and Sandra Vlasta. Leiden; Boston: Brill | Rodopi, 2018.
50 Key Terms in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Eds. Joost de Blooijs et al., 2018
Nederlandse letterkunde, 2013
Dutch Crossing, 2013
The ways in which the poems of Ramsey Nasr explore the urban space of the Flemish city of Antwerp... more The ways in which the poems of Ramsey Nasr explore the urban space of the Flemish city of Antwerp and stage encounters with various inhabitants of the Flemish metropolis are examined. In 2005, Nasr, a poet of Palestinian-Dutch background, was appointed City Poet of Antwerp. The nine poems that he wrote during this one-year-appointment were published in his third poetry collection onze-lieve-vrouwe-zeppelin. Antwerpse gedichten (2006). Through close analysis of three selected poems it is shown how this work by an urban poet-with-offi cial-status, a representative poet so to speak, represents the Antwerp cityscape. By reading the poems as examples of a third phase of literary fl anerie (whereby fl anerie refers to a particularly productive combination of simultaneous moving and seeing, reading and interpreting), what could be called postcolonial fl anerie is conceptualized. Postcolonial fl anerie refers to a particular way of processing the, at times, overwhelming experiences of the increasingly globalized metropolis. Nasr's 'Antwerpse stadsgedichten' [Antwerp city poems] feature as a poetic test case of postcolonial fl anerie.
Challenging the Myth of Monolingualism, 2014
Journal of Dutch Literature, 2010
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Books by Liesbeth Minnaard
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-36415-1?fbclid=IwAR2FCJijPN1hZ1bUjYrQsOxiGqmBAlK9XfJ6QiABDWKBdz7QEL7F49EzpS8
This edited volume rethinks crisis in relation to critique through the prism of various declared ‘crises’ in the Mediterranean: the refugee crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the Arab Spring, the Palestinian question, and others. With contributions from cultural, literary, film, and migration studies and sociology, this book shifts attention from Europe to the Mediterranean as a site not only of intersecting crises, but a breeding ground for new cultures of critique, visions of futurity, and radical imaginaries shaped through or against frameworks of crisis. If crisis rhetoric today serves populist, xenophobic or anti-democratic agendas, can the concept crisis still do the work of critique or partake in transformative languages by scholars, artists, and activists? Or should we forge different vocabularies to understand present realities? This collection explores alternative mobilizations of crisis and forms of art, cinema, literature, and cultural practices across the Mediterranean that disengage from dominant crisis narratives.
Is there an alternative to contemporary populism and oversimplification? The authors of De lichtheid van literatuur believe there is. Literature uses a different language to convey our multicultural realities, a language that is figurative, playful, fictive, and produces multilayered meanings. The non-serious language of literature does not diminish its social relevance, but marks the force of its intervention in the social field. The transformative character of literary language takes effect not despite, but because of its difference from public rhetoric: its unbearable lightness, which can have dead serious implications for society without being serious or making truth-claims.
Through their readings of literary works, the authors formulate a new vision on the multicultural society in which the complexity of language, imagination, and reality take center stage.
Articles and Chapters by Liesbeth Minnaard
Have a look at the complete issue or the separate contributions on: www.fkw-journal.de
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-36415-1?fbclid=IwAR2FCJijPN1hZ1bUjYrQsOxiGqmBAlK9XfJ6QiABDWKBdz7QEL7F49EzpS8
This edited volume rethinks crisis in relation to critique through the prism of various declared ‘crises’ in the Mediterranean: the refugee crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the Arab Spring, the Palestinian question, and others. With contributions from cultural, literary, film, and migration studies and sociology, this book shifts attention from Europe to the Mediterranean as a site not only of intersecting crises, but a breeding ground for new cultures of critique, visions of futurity, and radical imaginaries shaped through or against frameworks of crisis. If crisis rhetoric today serves populist, xenophobic or anti-democratic agendas, can the concept crisis still do the work of critique or partake in transformative languages by scholars, artists, and activists? Or should we forge different vocabularies to understand present realities? This collection explores alternative mobilizations of crisis and forms of art, cinema, literature, and cultural practices across the Mediterranean that disengage from dominant crisis narratives.
Is there an alternative to contemporary populism and oversimplification? The authors of De lichtheid van literatuur believe there is. Literature uses a different language to convey our multicultural realities, a language that is figurative, playful, fictive, and produces multilayered meanings. The non-serious language of literature does not diminish its social relevance, but marks the force of its intervention in the social field. The transformative character of literary language takes effect not despite, but because of its difference from public rhetoric: its unbearable lightness, which can have dead serious implications for society without being serious or making truth-claims.
Through their readings of literary works, the authors formulate a new vision on the multicultural society in which the complexity of language, imagination, and reality take center stage.
Have a look at the complete issue or the separate contributions on: www.fkw-journal.de