The Volkskrant reports (21 August 2019) that The Natherlands have the right to name a new exoplanet. The public have been asked to submit suggestions to a committee (oops, sorry, a “National Committee”, of course). Its president, Marieke Baan, is putting her hopes on a “nice, Dutch theme” for the name (een lekker Hollands thema), such as one of the Wadden islands or a painter (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Bosch, Vermeer, etc). Banal nationalism takes to the stars — to infinity and beyond.

As The Indepedent and other news media reported on 17 August 2019, the UK’s Arts Minister Rebecca Pow has placed an export ban on the painting Ferdinand Lured By Ariel (1850) by the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. The painting depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) recommended an export ban because of the detail of the natural life observed in the garden setting, and, more importantly, because the theme, the garden setting, and the artist were considered to be quintessentially English in character.
Pow called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood “a key part of British history and this is why we must keep this important work in the country.” RCEWA member Peter Barder called the painting “a summation of everything English. A novel interpretation of an episode from Shakespeare, it is set in a minutely observed English garden in the summer. [...] Such close observation was unique to the Pre-Raphaelites, one of the very few distinctively British art movements. An epitome of its type and of Englishness, I hope a British institution will find the means to keep it in this country”.
The comments pinpoint the conscious invocation of tradition (and that meant, almost by default, English tradition) by the Pre-Raphaelites; they also show how that programme of “Englishness” has meanwhile become a key factor in the assignment of value to their work; what is more, an Englishness that reponds to the Pre-Raphaelite nostalgic taste for Shakespeare, country gardens, and Victorian eye-candy aesthetics.

As an imagologist I am often asked by my social-scientific or social-historical colleagues how I can determine the representativity of the literary material I study. If, in studying the English image of Italy, I draw on George Eliot and E.M. Foster, is that not a very restricted and rarefied data sample, almost a random stab in the dark? What wider conclusions could possibly be drawn from such a minute sample regarding ‘the’ image of Italy in England, or attitudes generally vis-à-vis Italy as current in England?

That ‘representativity’ challenge is irrelevant and pernicious, and should be rejected out of hand. It imposes on the humanities an entire set of assumptions and working methods that are alien and uncongenial to it, beginning with the idea  (too ingrained to be consciously reflected upon, let alone queried) that what we study are selected samples as proxy data for a larger whole – that larger whole being, ideally, society as such.
.....

Two items in the British quality Press (Guardian and Observer) about Irish culture, from January 2018 and April 2019.

In one, German-born, Irish-raised Stephanie Preissner, co-writer of the Netflix comedy show Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, combines pop history and feminist denunciations of ingrained misogyny into Irish essentialist self-stereotyping: “It’s said that Irish people are funnier because they’ve developed humour as a coping mechanism for the terrible stuff that’s happened in our past [...] If that’s true, humour is bound to be ingrained in the DNA of Irish women given the horrors we’ve dealt with.”
.....

During the FIFA's 2018 World Cup held in Russia, expressions of national identitity and the concomitant stereotypes were omnipresent. Not only because the participating teams represent nation-states, but also because the cultural specificity of each nation is emphasized by organisations, corporations and fans. The idea that each nation is somehow unique is noticeable not only in the distinctive aesthetic features but also in the belief that each nation possesses its own character. Often, this national character is a tool to interpret a team's game on the pitch. One example (of many) concerns a comment by the Danish former  player Kenneth Pérez when he was asked which team disappointed him the most: "Denmark. I do not refer to the fact we lost in the second round, but to the manner in which we played. They were not playing at all-in accordance with the Danish DNA. It was so steady, it looked more like Norway." After winning the semis against England, the Croatian coach also explained the team's performance by invoking a more general and 'deeper' passionate national character: "our team was losing three times and had to come back. We are that kind of people, proud and of strong character. This is fantastic for Croatian football and country, […] we do not have a stadium, these are our circumstances, but we do have passion and quality players." How the given team plays is explained by how the nation is.

[To read the extended essay version, click on this link: http://imagologica.eu/CMS/upload/WorldCup2018.pdf ]

A commemorative event on 26 July 2018 marks the fact that it it then exactly 437 years ago that the Estates General of the United Provinces foreswore the Spanish King Philip II as their lawful sovereign. The act of 1581 was indeed a great moment in the history of democracy and the run-up to the idea of popular sovereignty. The commemoration frames it, however, as a national-identitarian event. "The Netherlands commemorates the signing of the document", as the press header has it, and the day is insistently called "Independence Day" - under the emotive header "Is The Netherlands ready for its own Independence Day?", suggesting this could be an annual feast day. One historian places the initiative in the context of similar recent celebrations of Dutch national symbols. While the instigator admits that the initiative could be assocated with nationalism (and the tone of the newspaper coverage is a good illustration of that drift) he thinks its emphasis on an innate right to freedom would appeal to all ethnic communities in the country. In other words, it is an expression of “good” civic nationalism rather than “bad” ethnic nationalism – as if you can have one without the other.

Exactly 437 years ago. Clearly this speaks to the anxieties of, precisely, 2018......

As spotted in a supermarket last week. How do you make people buy your brand of milk?

Images of wholesome agriculture (cow, pasture), but also a lot of nationality: an iconic windmill (not really there for dairy purposes...), a Dutch red-white-and-blue flag, and a stamp stating in huge letters that this milk was made with passion by DUTCH farming families (note the added feel-good invocation of Family Values).

Roel Reiné is a filmmaker with a penchant for heroic-historical action movies with heavy overlays of special effects. His popular action movie Michiel de Ruyter (2015; distributed internationally under the English title Admiral) already contained a remarkably anachronistic, flag-waving speech extolling the character and greatness of the Dutch nation (online here). In interviews, Roelé testifies to his appreciation of patriotic flag-saluting ceremonial in the USA. He would like to see a similar ethos in his native Netherlands, and is candid about this as the motivation for the bombastic flag-waving in Michiel de Ruyter.

Roelé, again teamed up with producer Klaas de Jong, has now turned his attention to an earlier hero: The Frisian King Redbad (†719), known for his resistance against Christianization and Frankish hegemony. Advance notices (the film is due out this month) indicate that this is, again, an unabashedly nationalistic production and that its script (again by Alex van Galen) involves a similar mixture of anachronistic distortions of historical fact and manipulative xenophobic ethnotyping.
.....

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was interviewed by Mehreen Khan in the Financial Times, (“Dutch leader ready to be EU champion on free trade", (FT, 27-03-2018, p. 7), as part of his publicity campaign to position himself as the go-to free-market Conservative Liberal after Brexit. He went on record as saying that "The Netherlands, since the 16th century, has always been trying to maintain the balance between the great powers - France, Germany, and the UK" and that free trade is "part of the Dutch DNA".

Whatever the Free-trade DNA (has this taken over from the equally fabled Dutch moralism and tolerance?), Rutte, who has studied history, should know that he is off by at least a century with his 16th-cetury flourish. it is arguably wrong to date a balance-of-power policy to the pre-1670. But ethnotyping is just that: bad history dressed up as a timeless national characteristic.

Newspaper headlines are increasingly taking the "why" form: "Why such-and-such is so-and-so". Threadbare as it is becoming by now (and patently serving as "clickbait"), it makes good journalistic sense: it raises a topic and at the same time promises an explanation. Two recent contributions to the Dutch Volkskrant show its questionable side in using the form  "Why such and such a cultural group behaves in this or that manner".  

The one that prompted this blog entry was Natalie Hanssen’s piece "This is why Danes are so happy: Be normal", with the sub-header "Don’t ever think that you are better than the others or that you amount to something special" (Dit is waarom de Denen zo gelukkig zijn: vooral normaal doen / Denk in godsnaam niet dat je beter bent dan een ander of überhaupt iets voorstelt); posted 17 November; online here). It adds its mite to the hygge hype by presenting the timeworn Danish cultural meme of Janteloven or “the law of Jante” [a fictionalized small town made famous in a 1933 book]. Not exactly a staggering new discovery - the wikipedia article on the topic has versions in 30 languages; nor so very Danish after all – the Dutch have their “doe maar gewoon” convention, and any small-town mentality will look askance at pretentious neighbours; but hey, don’t be a grouch, it’s good enough, apparently, for some diverting weekend reading......