Be[com]ing Dutch is the ambitious two-year project of the Van Abbemuseum, comprising debates, reading groups, artist's projects, exhibitions, residencies, and forms of collective participation and production. Its main premise is to ask whether “art can offer alternative examples of thinking about how we can live together today”. The project won the Mondriaan Foundation prize for the stimulation of Cultural Diversity. And what a prize: no less than euro 500.000,-! This was probably one of the few times I saw an item on the national news about an art event, but of course here the headline was the (relatively) big amount of money and little attention was paid to the actual content of the project.

I finally managed to attend one of the lectures and panels at the CAUCUS, taking place from 9 November to 6 December. It has to be said that traveling to Eindhoven can already be viewed as an exercise in be[com]in Dutch: though it takes me almost the same amount of time to get from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, Eindhoven seems psychologically so far away. Be[com]ing Dutch is, solely by ways of its location, trying to get rid of the “randstad” mentality.(again a nice Dutch notion which indicates the urbanized area between Rotterdam and Amsterdam).

On the menu were author and sociologist Dick Pels, Professor of Women’s Studies at Utrecht University Rosi Braidotti, curator of the 9th Istanbul Biennial (with Charles Esche) and founder of Platform Garanti in Istanbul Vasif Kortun, and editor and journalist of Mid East politics and culture Malu Halasa. I had unfortunately missed Chantal Mouffe’s lecture earlier in the day, but had the opportunity – and at times the displeasure – to audit her lengthy comments and interventions during the Q&A.

However, allow me to recap in this first post on Dick Pels’ presentation, which somehow in format, content and argument was very symptomatic of what can be called the “Dutch condition”. Forgive the pathology in the usage of terms, but it is the only designation I find adequate. Pels started his presentation referring to Princess Maxima’s speech on September 24th on the occasion of the WRR report (scientific council for governmental policy) about “identification with the Netherlands”. In this contested speech she said that a singular Dutch identity is non-existent, and that a Dutch identity should not be seen as a demarcated thing, but is diverse and pluriform. Maxima is probably well-versed in post-modern theory, but of course this all didn’t go down well with populist right-wingers and neo-liberals, so the poor future queen had to bear the brunt of criticism. Pels built his whole talk around the tension between what right-wing populism advocates: a strong (and proud) essentialist national identity. And well…what he offers as a counterweight: “positive identity weakness”, namely that instead of seeking a strong identity in a (artificially top-down imposed) shared set of norms and values, identity is to be found in the discord and discussion we share.

In other words: it is not what we have in common that marks identity, but where we differ. Of course at first glance this sounds like wonderful fluid, poly-phonic postmodern music to my ears, but it is also somewhere hopelessly utopian in this day and age, and out of sync with what’s really happening now. Moreover, it is this blatant pragmatism that I would categorise as being something typically Dutch. Within this whole scenario there’s a lot of emphasis on linking identity to democratic debate. Mind you, this obsession with discussion without action or consequence is also very Dutch, as anyone suffering from the “vergadercultuur” (meeting culture) would attest to. I fear it will be hard to convince the populist right-wing that trading strong nationalism for a seeming non-identity which core is to facilitate a defense of practices and institutions which enable and allow us to conduct democratic conversations, makes for a good deal. I would happily push forward Pels’ plea for more self-relativism in matters of identity and belonging, but howcome the self-relativism and positive weakness he propagates tastes so Dutch and reeks as much of Dutchness as any other nationalist essentialist label, just that it is packaged in a more palatable democratic moral wrapping? Ultimately, it might seem like a rhetoric strategy to wage for a power position: I am weak, therefore I am righteous.