The Dutch National Monument of the History of Slavery, a visual enforcement of 'Eurocentric Cultural Memory'

Abstract

This thesis explores how the Dutch National Monument of the History of Slavery’s visual presentation, combined with its commemorative function, conflicts with its intention of challenging Eurocentric ideology. It does so by first providing a theoretical background which integrates theory surrounding Eurocentrism, and theory surrounding historical remembrance and commemoration, into the notion of ‘Eurocentric cultural memory’. This notion refers to how ideas of European, Western (and white) superiority, stemming from modern imperialism, are centralized using the support of a collective cultural memory which is cultivated through acts of historical remembrance and commemoration. Hereafter, a visual analysis of the Dutch National Monument (...) is provided in order to determine the monument’s relation to the presence of Eurocentric cultural memory. This visual analysis is performed according to the academic tradition of semiology. The analysis first focusses on the monument’s denotative signs. Secondly, the cultural and symbolic connotations of these denotative signs are discussed, where after the ‘myth’ emerging from these two prior levels of signification is described. It is argued that the Dutch National Monument (...)’s simplistic, dramatized and sensational design, combined with the chronological juxtaposition of its three pieces and the erasure of context, construct the myth of ‘the ex-slave’. This myth defines the Dutch black individual through its ‘former historical status of enslavement’, representing the Dutch black individual as defined, scarred and crippled by its colonial past. Furthermore, this representation is inserted into the Dutch cultural memory due to the monument’s commemorative function, and thus absorbed into the Dutch collective consciousness.