Governmental attempts to reinvigorate Dutchness and their self-

defeating effects

Rogier van Reekum

Research project: The culturalization of citizenship in public debates on

Dutchness

Two questions on solidarity

• Which psychological force: love of self or love of us?

• Which collective: only us or also them?

Dynamics of public discourse

What does discourse do?

1. Culturalist-psychological answer: meanings determine actions, people are caught in culture (except for the analyst)

1. Sociological-pragmatist answer: meanings are actions, people are trying to deal with problems (just like the analyst)

Nationalism and Solidarity

A problem of industrial modernity: who is included in collective re-arrangements

of risks and benefits?

Nationalism has been a very successful way to treat people as equals*: national / citizen

- impersonal ties between nationals- each national is one individual- one belongs to a nation immediately- categorical belonging, not relational

* thereby at once justifying the unequal treatment of people, making discrimination just.

In other words:

nationalism has been an important answer to the question “whose equality?” by making the immediate belonging of each individual member self-evident: “the Dutch”.*

nationalism’s power lies in its self-evidence: justifications are no longer needed.

* it also makes the other’s inequality incontestable.

Two preliminary conclusions:

1. Self-interest?:

nationalism enables people to deal with each other as individuals, equal exemplars of the national essence.

2. Also them?:

identity is a temporary condensation of justificatory dissensus, rights become natural.

1980-2002: return of public dissensus

• debates articulate the outside: immigrant, minority, allochthones, Muslim, not-yet-integrated

• on the inside Dutchness itself remains indefinable: open, modern, progressive, liberal, free, pragmatic

2002 - 2010: governmental reactions

• vagueness is taken as a problem

• governmental measures to impose Dutchness

Three performative effects

1. marking difference: only not-yet-Dutch need to be imposed upon

1. marking dissensus: Dutchness can/cannot be imposed

1. culturalized citizenship and dissensual nationhood

Nationalism and Solidarity

• Not: excluded from nation; migrants were never included

• But: denaturalized nation; collective equality loses self-evidence

Cul-de-sac: public dissensus over Dutchness impedes the articulation of 21ste century commons

Thank You