White Innocence

All the energies poured into critical theory, into novel and demystifying theoretical praxes-have avoided the major, I would say the determining political horizon of modern Western culture, namely imperialism.Edward Said, “Secular Interpretation” “A Particular Knowledge . . .”This book is dedicated to an exploration of a strong paradox that is operative in the Netherlands and that, as I argue, is at the heart of the nation: the passion, forcefulness, and even aggression that race, in its intersections with gender, sexuality, and class, elicits among the white population, while at the same time the reactions of denial, disavowal, and elusiveness reign supreme.I am intrigued by the way that race pops up in unexpected places and moments, literally as the return of the repressed, while a dominant discourse stubbornly maintains that the Netherlands is and always has been color-blind and antiracist, a place of extraordinary hospitality and tolerance toward the racialized/ethnicized other, whether this quintessential other is perceived as black in some eras or as Muslim in others.One of the key sites where this paradox is operative, I submit, is the white Dutch sense of self, which takes center stage in this book.I strongly suspect that with national variations, a similar configuration is operative in other international settings that have an imperial history.It is my-admittedly ambitious and iconoclastic-aim to write an ethnography of dominant white