Reflections in a Postcolonial Mirror: a Comparative Analysis of Hella Haasse's "Oeroeg" (1948) and "Sleuteloog" (2002)

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the way in which literature informs, criticizes and constructs the collective memory of the colonial past. The images that constitute the Dutch collective memory of the colonial era manifest themselves in a wide range of social constructs and cultural products, such as art and literature. Literature can be regarded as a site where the collective memory of a country is represented or reflected. However, a literary work is also an active agent in constructing the images that inform collective memory, and must therefore be studied as both a product as well as a producer of that memory. Within the larger context of Dutch writing on the East Indies, the relationship between representation and colonial reality will be discussed: how did the Dutch represent their colonial past in literary and other forms of writing from the sixteenth century onwards? How did these representations contribute to images of the East Indies that still linger on today? Within the smaller context of my analysis, I will focus specifically on two literary novels by an author for whom the former Dutch colony of the East Indies is a defining theme: Hella Haasse. Haasse’s work deals with the issues of history, memory and representation. The novels that I have chosen for my analysis, Oeroeg (1948) and Sleuteloog (2002), address the same overall theme (the East Indies), but were written with more than half a century of time difference between them, creating a relevant case study for my research.