Guiselle Starink-Martha (Radboud University Nijmegen)
In a globalized world where migration and transnational connections are commonplace, questions regarding the manner in which collective memory and identities are constantly (re)constructed and expressed have become more pressing than ever.
It is precisely through their displacement to a new host-country that members of migrant communities are confronted by other groups, from which they tend to distinguish themselves by (re)constructing and performing the memory of a collective cultural identity. For Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands this means balancing and constantly reconfiguring their already kaleidoscopic identities (Yu’I Korsow versus being Boneirean, Leeward island versus Windward islands etc.) to come to grips with for example a shared Caribbeanness with Surinamese, a shared Dutchness with European Dutch or African roots with Ghanese migrants in the Netherlands. This construction and expression of a Caribbean-Antillean identity can be perceived when looking at the proliferation of non European Dutch Antillean, Latin American and otherwise Caribbean musical and theatrical (komedia) performances created by or attended by Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands. In this paper we will to look at how the Dutch Antillean diaspora speaks to (the memory of) the island and by doing so refers to its (image of) itself. How are the island and the collective identity remembered and (re) created through these embodied, performative practices? How is a collective memory constructed and expressed and to what extent is Caribbeanness juxtaposed to a more local “Dutch Antilleanness”, to European Dutchness, to the Surinamese (Dutch) etc.? To answer these questions I will look at Dutch Antillean musical and theatrical expressions of embodied memory as means of self definition and of collective identity construction.
