Demeyer, Hans; (2025) Coming-of-age in de witte orde. Witheid, affect en racialisering in de hedendaagse Nederlandstalige letteren. Nederlandse Letterkunde , 30 (1) pp. 63-92. 10.5117/nedlet2025.1.003.deme.

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Abstract

Following Liesbeth Minnaard’s earlier call for studies of whiteness and racial inequality and Hans Demeyer’s work on ‘worlding’, this article aims to make whiteness visible in Neerlandophone literary studies. Whiteness functions as an invisible norm, appearing as neutrality yet making racialized others visible as well as hierarchically ordering them. Making whiteness visible is therefore key to undo its power. Building on discussions of whiteness as order and affect, this article makes whiteness appear in three different ways, each touching upon a different aspect of Neerlandophone literature or its study. Firstly, through a discussion of an interview with authors Hanna Bervoets and Marjolijn van Heemstra I look at the relation between cultural capital and whiteness, and show how an awareness of whiteness does not obstruct its functioning. I secondly discuss two recent coming-of-age novels set in times of ‘colourblindness’: Confrontaties(2020) by Simone Atangana Bekono and Lotgenoten(2024) by Sabrine Ingabire. In both novels, the protagonists’ affective crises are exacerbated by the lack of discourses around racism and whiteness. As both novels demonstrate a structure of feeling that moves from assimilation to confrontation, I thirdly focus on the discourse of diversity and inclusion that our discipline uses to frame literature from non-white authors and I suggest to replace or accompany it with a discourse on whiteness as dominance.

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