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.
How does one imagine plurality? How does one find new strategies for writing diversity and polyph... more How does one imagine plurality? How does one find new strategies for writing diversity and polyphony? How does one read the most challenging creative and critical works of the present time? This bi-lingual volume of twelve English and eight French papers proposes to breach linguistic critical frontiers by placing careful analysis of texts from different language traditions in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural dialogue. In this collection of theoretically and politically aware close readings of contemporary cultural production, the focus of analysis rests on the multiple and complex global convergences and interferences of cultural influences. The collection foregrounds the work of innovative writers who seek to express the ungraspable presence of cultural “newness” at the same time as situating themselves in the richness of detail of local lives. This volume, most particularly, finds a balance of critical approach between the everyday attempts at negotiation and survival, and the insight brought to the reader by postcolonial, syncretic and feminist theoretical analysis.
Om de Tweede Feministische Golf dichter bij huis te halen, interviewt Leidschrift Isabel Hoving (... more Om de Tweede Feministische Golf dichter bij huis te halen, interviewt Leidschrift Isabel Hoving (59). Zij is in het verleden actief geweest in de vrouwenbeweging, heeft zich later gespecialiseerd in cultuurwetenschappen en genderstudies en is sinds een jaar verantwoordelijk voor het diversiteitsbeleid van de Universiteit Leiden. Typisch vrouwentraject 'Als ik ernaar kijk, vanuit historische blik, dan heb ik een typisch vrouwentraject afgelegd.' Wanneer Hoving begint te spreken over haar achtergrond, is dat direct in de analytische, gedistantieerde bewoordingen van een wetenschapper. In haar sobere kantoor in de Oude Universiteitsbibliotheek spreken we haar over haar verleden als feministe, haar carrière als wetenschapper en haar huidige werk. Een academische carrière was voor haar niet vanzelfsprekend. Hoewel Hovings familie redelijk hoog opgeleid was, lag het niet in de lijn der verwachting dat zij zou gaan studeren. 'Ik dacht nooit, ik ga studeren. Ik dacht nooit, ik ben slim. Het was zo in die tijd, dat dacht je van jezelf niet als meisje.' In haar familie zaten onderwijzers en predikanten, haar vader was musicus, haar moeder letterkundige. Zij zag een duidelijke rolverdeling tussen haar broer en haar: 'Hij was de intelligente en ik was de artistieke. Zo was het. Eigenlijk, als je terugkijkt, denk je, hè, dat is zo stereotype.' Na een mislukt experiment op de kunstacademie-'ik vónd het toch saai!'-wilde ze iets met taal of verhalen doen, dus schreef ze zich in voor de lerarenopleiding Frans en Nederlands in Nijmegen. Na een moeizame start waarin ze 'helemaal afgemaakt' werd, kreeg ze het lesgeven in de vingers en begon ze het leuk te vinden. Toch miste ze iets. De gedachte om 'echt' te gaan studeren ontstond pas toen ze begin jaren tachtig naar het 'rode' Groningen verhuisde. Daar was een heel actieve vrouwenbeweging waar Hoving al snel deel van uitmaakte. Ook dat was echter niet vanzelfsprekend. 'Ik was er eigenlijk ook tegen,' vertrouwt Hoving ons toe, 'Tegen vrouwen, tegen feminisme. Maar toen dacht ik, kom op, Isabel, dat is stom. Je weet niet eens wat het is en je
ThamyrisJintersecting's mission is to rigorously bring into encounter the crucial insights o... more ThamyrisJintersecting's mission is to rigorously bring into encounter the crucial insights of black and ethnic studies, gender studies, and queer studies, and facilitate dialogue and confrontations between them. lntersecting shares this focus with Thamyris, the socially ...
Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject impels black feminist literary and c... more Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject impels black feminist literary and critical discourse into the field of cultural critical theory. There, it traces its territorial negotiations with other discourses that also challenge the modernist politics of imperialism, racism, and sexism from "within" the Western metropolis-postmodernist theories-and from "without"-postcolonial, and other non-Western and anti-dominant positions. These discourses, Carole Boyce Davies tells us, operate with black feminist writing in "braidlike or web-like" figurations. Far from situating black feminism in singular locations, Boyce Davies marks out a "politics of location" as she both identifies and theorizes agency in relation to the cross-hatching themes of geographic place and displacement, social and economic positionality, ethnic, racial, gender and sexual boundaries, and the experiences of (im)migration and alienness. Rather than deduce "experience" from identity, Boyce Davies's method focuses on the politics that shape experience: "It is important...to differentiate between activist Black feminists and conservative Black women scholars (even when they are working on women), between those who are committed to social change and those who want fuller participation in systems as they exist." Echoing Adrienne Rich's reminder to North American feminists of the imperialist presumptions their geographic location entails, Boyce Davies rejects the exclusivist politics of black feminism in identifying "black woman" with African Americans in the United States. Instead, she posits a cross-cultural examination of black women's resistance and welcomes alliances with Western feminist and other liberatory projects. In a metaphor that recalls Zora Neale Hurston's mediations of difference between the Eatonville black folk and the passing white travellers, in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Boyce Davies depicts black feminism's negotiation of space with other "oppositional" discourses: It is "going a piece of the way with them." In its focus on the tensions and alliances between a "portable"
... See Hans Achterhuis,Scarcity and Sustainability, in Global Ecology: A New Arena of Politica... more ... See Hans Achterhuis,Scarcity and Sustainability, in Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed, 1993): 10416, and Jozef Keulartz, Strijd ... This conversation is interrupted 24 Arjun Appadurai, Globalization (Durham NC: Duke UP, 2000 ...
This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and... more This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities today. Most of these, which are responding to environmental destruction and climate change, are characterized by an affinity with posthumanism and/or materialism (e.g. Alaimo, Colebrook, Morton), often in the face of the need to radically rethink the nature of humanity within a global, geophysical frame (Chakrabarty, Dimock, Morton). In the second part of my paper, the case of Dutch environmentally inspired art allows me to explore the problems in the artistic articulation of such a much-needed global, materialist approach. Ecocriticism in the Netherlands faces an interesting challenge. The heavily industrialized, densely inhabited Netherlands is very much a constructed landscape, forged in centuries of close interaction between men and nature, and there is very little untouched nature left. On the one hand, the Dutch like to boast of the fact that they have...
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.
How does one imagine plurality? How does one find new strategies for writing diversity and polyph... more How does one imagine plurality? How does one find new strategies for writing diversity and polyphony? How does one read the most challenging creative and critical works of the present time? This bi-lingual volume of twelve English and eight French papers proposes to breach linguistic critical frontiers by placing careful analysis of texts from different language traditions in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural dialogue. In this collection of theoretically and politically aware close readings of contemporary cultural production, the focus of analysis rests on the multiple and complex global convergences and interferences of cultural influences. The collection foregrounds the work of innovative writers who seek to express the ungraspable presence of cultural “newness” at the same time as situating themselves in the richness of detail of local lives. This volume, most particularly, finds a balance of critical approach between the everyday attempts at negotiation and survival, and the insight brought to the reader by postcolonial, syncretic and feminist theoretical analysis.
Om de Tweede Feministische Golf dichter bij huis te halen, interviewt Leidschrift Isabel Hoving (... more Om de Tweede Feministische Golf dichter bij huis te halen, interviewt Leidschrift Isabel Hoving (59). Zij is in het verleden actief geweest in de vrouwenbeweging, heeft zich later gespecialiseerd in cultuurwetenschappen en genderstudies en is sinds een jaar verantwoordelijk voor het diversiteitsbeleid van de Universiteit Leiden. Typisch vrouwentraject 'Als ik ernaar kijk, vanuit historische blik, dan heb ik een typisch vrouwentraject afgelegd.' Wanneer Hoving begint te spreken over haar achtergrond, is dat direct in de analytische, gedistantieerde bewoordingen van een wetenschapper. In haar sobere kantoor in de Oude Universiteitsbibliotheek spreken we haar over haar verleden als feministe, haar carrière als wetenschapper en haar huidige werk. Een academische carrière was voor haar niet vanzelfsprekend. Hoewel Hovings familie redelijk hoog opgeleid was, lag het niet in de lijn der verwachting dat zij zou gaan studeren. 'Ik dacht nooit, ik ga studeren. Ik dacht nooit, ik ben slim. Het was zo in die tijd, dat dacht je van jezelf niet als meisje.' In haar familie zaten onderwijzers en predikanten, haar vader was musicus, haar moeder letterkundige. Zij zag een duidelijke rolverdeling tussen haar broer en haar: 'Hij was de intelligente en ik was de artistieke. Zo was het. Eigenlijk, als je terugkijkt, denk je, hè, dat is zo stereotype.' Na een mislukt experiment op de kunstacademie-'ik vónd het toch saai!'-wilde ze iets met taal of verhalen doen, dus schreef ze zich in voor de lerarenopleiding Frans en Nederlands in Nijmegen. Na een moeizame start waarin ze 'helemaal afgemaakt' werd, kreeg ze het lesgeven in de vingers en begon ze het leuk te vinden. Toch miste ze iets. De gedachte om 'echt' te gaan studeren ontstond pas toen ze begin jaren tachtig naar het 'rode' Groningen verhuisde. Daar was een heel actieve vrouwenbeweging waar Hoving al snel deel van uitmaakte. Ook dat was echter niet vanzelfsprekend. 'Ik was er eigenlijk ook tegen,' vertrouwt Hoving ons toe, 'Tegen vrouwen, tegen feminisme. Maar toen dacht ik, kom op, Isabel, dat is stom. Je weet niet eens wat het is en je
ThamyrisJintersecting's mission is to rigorously bring into encounter the crucial insights o... more ThamyrisJintersecting's mission is to rigorously bring into encounter the crucial insights of black and ethnic studies, gender studies, and queer studies, and facilitate dialogue and confrontations between them. lntersecting shares this focus with Thamyris, the socially ...
Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject impels black feminist literary and c... more Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject impels black feminist literary and critical discourse into the field of cultural critical theory. There, it traces its territorial negotiations with other discourses that also challenge the modernist politics of imperialism, racism, and sexism from "within" the Western metropolis-postmodernist theories-and from "without"-postcolonial, and other non-Western and anti-dominant positions. These discourses, Carole Boyce Davies tells us, operate with black feminist writing in "braidlike or web-like" figurations. Far from situating black feminism in singular locations, Boyce Davies marks out a "politics of location" as she both identifies and theorizes agency in relation to the cross-hatching themes of geographic place and displacement, social and economic positionality, ethnic, racial, gender and sexual boundaries, and the experiences of (im)migration and alienness. Rather than deduce "experience" from identity, Boyce Davies's method focuses on the politics that shape experience: "It is important...to differentiate between activist Black feminists and conservative Black women scholars (even when they are working on women), between those who are committed to social change and those who want fuller participation in systems as they exist." Echoing Adrienne Rich's reminder to North American feminists of the imperialist presumptions their geographic location entails, Boyce Davies rejects the exclusivist politics of black feminism in identifying "black woman" with African Americans in the United States. Instead, she posits a cross-cultural examination of black women's resistance and welcomes alliances with Western feminist and other liberatory projects. In a metaphor that recalls Zora Neale Hurston's mediations of difference between the Eatonville black folk and the passing white travellers, in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Boyce Davies depicts black feminism's negotiation of space with other "oppositional" discourses: It is "going a piece of the way with them." In its focus on the tensions and alliances between a "portable"
... See Hans Achterhuis,Scarcity and Sustainability, in Global Ecology: A New Arena of Politica... more ... See Hans Achterhuis,Scarcity and Sustainability, in Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, ed. Wolfgang Sachs (London: Zed, 1993): 10416, and Jozef Keulartz, Strijd ... This conversation is interrupted 24 Arjun Appadurai, Globalization (Durham NC: Duke UP, 2000 ...
This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and... more This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities today. Most of these, which are responding to environmental destruction and climate change, are characterized by an affinity with posthumanism and/or materialism (e.g. Alaimo, Colebrook, Morton), often in the face of the need to radically rethink the nature of humanity within a global, geophysical frame (Chakrabarty, Dimock, Morton). In the second part of my paper, the case of Dutch environmentally inspired art allows me to explore the problems in the artistic articulation of such a much-needed global, materialist approach. Ecocriticism in the Netherlands faces an interesting challenge. The heavily industrialized, densely inhabited Netherlands is very much a constructed landscape, forged in centuries of close interaction between men and nature, and there is very little untouched nature left. On the one hand, the Dutch like to boast of the fact that they have...
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Books by Isabel Hoving
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.
Papers by Isabel Hoving
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.