by Eric de Kuyper
On criticism in the Netherlands and Flanders
“When my better half is not there, I never speak ill of her. Only in her presence do I criticize,” he said.
That seemed very wise to me. I always tried to do the same with Flanders and Holland. When I lived in the South, I tried to excuse the absent North as much as possible; Flanders, on the other hand, got the full brunt. Now that I live in the Netherlands, not a bad word about Flanders passes my lips. (There is no reason to, because Holland never asks for my opinion about the neighboring country anyway). So the Netherlands may now hear my criticism.
Sometimes I cannot escape doing a so-called comparative research, because I have or have had something to do with the Netherlands and with Flanders. I don’t like to do that. I also don’t like to compare Germany with France, England with Italy. But sometimes you can’t escape it.
There are great differences between the two living cultures. A lot more differences than similarities I think. Fortunately, because who wants a second Flanders, or a second Netherlands. One of each more than suffices. Although there are many differences between the two countries, there is also a great similarity: both countries have a hard time with the phenomenon of “criticism.” In all its manifestations: both art criticism, which has a difficult existence in North and South, and what I would call “everyday criticism.” But also the more subtle activity that belongs to the task of the intellectual: critical examination and analysis is sporadically developed. Roland Barthes has nicely described this activity as making things burst open, tearing open what is caked on. Indeed, criticism is etymologically related to “krisis,” to the Greek “krinein,” which means as much as tearing open. It is something like violently tearing off the velcro or, on the other hand, carefully picking it loose. After which the fragments, the false coherence, are observed and analyzed, and on that basis a proposal is made to better align the elements, to make them interact again and more harmoniously. Indeed, we recognize in this the function of the intellectual. And not only his function, but also what I will call his temperament. So it should come as no surprise that both Flanders and Holland, neither of which have a clear understanding of what “criticism” is, are at odds with their intellectuals. In neither culture does the soil prove very suitable for this fine fauna. In the Netherlands they have designed a reserve for these weeds. “Intellectuals” are put there in “columns.” “Columnists” they are then called. They are respected, popular, they are allowed to go about their business risk-free like court jesters used to do. Sometimes they are allowed to perform this function from abroad. But outside this reserve, criticism is out of the question and practiced virtually non-existent. The common man who shows ambition or aptitude for this intellectual activity is strongly discouraged, if not explicitly forbidden, from learning this art, let alone practicing it. In everyday life, on the street, in the train or streetcar, or at the post office counter, you will never smell criticism in the Netherlands. Criticism of facts, which is something else than moaning. In a pub you hear a lot of moaning, never criticism of e.g. the miserable service, which is a fact. We had Carmiggelt and Rubinstein for that, and beyond that we have “question beacons” and ombudsmen.
But Holland wouldn’t be Holland, and Flanders wouldn’t be Flanders, if there weren’t also a sheer difference between the two in dealing with the phenomenon of criticism. It seems as if each of the two cultures is intentionally (?) an antithesis in terms of obtuseness.
In Flanders, it is as if only “criticism” exists. With a lust that often takes on masochistic proportions, every form of criticism is multiplied ad infinitum. Criticism is followed by counter-criticism; there is no end to it. One revels in it. But it is like in a swamp: all sharp edges, all vicious or hair-raising dissections sink into a soggy bottom. Everyone nods and nods. One agrees. Always agree. Come we drink another pint. And in the meantime we just go on.
The ideal place for criticism here, of course, is the café. Criticism, at whatever level instigated, inevitably ends in gibberish and drivel. Result. Zero. Consequences need not be attached to it; in this way criticism erodes itself in the most efficient way. A miracle of repressive tolerance Marcuse would have called it, had he known Flanders. And Barthes, had he known Flanders, would have been driven to despair. For him, criticism could only function on rocky soil, he saw it as a kind of “seismology,” as an art of making the earth’s crust burst open. and not as an occupation that takes place in the drabness of Belgium’s beer soil.
Completely different, extremely different, is the Dutch relationship to criticism (and self-criticism). In short, people are deaf to it at both ears. And if the hard-hearing doesn’t help, they just stick their heads in the sand. Happy ostriches. “Something that wouldn’t work so well? Why, what are you talking about?”, “A peculiarity of the people’s nature” that you want to dwell on for a moment. An opportunity not taken advantage of, an opportunity passed by”. Silence. People look at you with disbelieving eyes, shake their heads and do not understand what you are talking about. It is true that in the democratic paradiis everyone in the public gallery has the right to express his opinion. Even those who voice “criticism” (read: nonsense). You are listened to compassionately and patiently. After which one proceeds to the order of the day. The criticism is minuted. We call another meeting.
The outcome is the same in North and South – zero. Only the strategy for arriving at that outcome is completely different.
There is indeed a difference. Of course, I don’t even need to explain or justify my “criticism of Flanders” here. It is readily accepted by the Flemish themselves; and the Dutchman will not care what happens in Flanders or what is said about Flanders. For the disbelieving Dutchman, however, I am forced to substantiate more precisely the observation I have just made. I have to give some examples, because the Dutchman obviously does not recognize himself in this portrait. (Nor, for that matter, does the Fleming in his, but who cares! A little more or less criticism, what does it matter in this country!)
So my Dutch example. I am an observer of daily life, rather than of politics that I don’t understand. How people live day by day, I find fascinating, and that tells me a lot about the country I live in. I also understand that a little bit. That’s my job shall I say.
Since living in the Netherlands I have studied the phenomenon of public transportation, more specifically the Dutch Railways. Whenever I have expressed my critical findings, depending on the virulence of my argument or the touchiness of my interlocutor (sometimes the Dutch Railways in person), people have shaken their heads in pity or flatly denied it. For example, it was flatly denied that there are never enough seats on the Dutch platforms (“who wants to sit on a platform!”), that the signs are illegible, that it would be useful to know not only the departure times but also different arrival times per station, and so on.
My findings about an aspect of the organization of daily life, which at no time were intended to be ungracious, let alone revolutionary, were simply ignored. It was what Stendhal called “la mauvaise foi,” I don’t know a good equivalent for it in Dutch. Freud called it “Verneinung.” We’ll just say it’s down to popular nature. Life is indeed complicated enough.
But now comes the strangest thing. After years of whining this way, one day public opinion suddenly turns en masse. Since recently, Dutch Railways have become the “bête noire” of the Dutch people. Nothing is right anymore, and for some time now a weekly magazine has been filling a popular column with all the disasters and inconveniences that plague us Dutch train passengers. How can that be, I wonder. I am now starting, of all things, to protect the Dutch Sooorweaen myself a beetie. But I fear it will never be right again.
Strange phenomenon, this Dutch extremism. Because you can call it that. First they don’t want to hear anything, and then suddenly the gate is opened. Is that perhaps why people so stubbornly repress all forms, all tendencies to act critically? Are we afraid that criticism would unleash an unstoppable avalanche?
Both the one attitude – that of petulant incomprehension – and the other – that of unbridled self-destruction – prove to me once again that things are not going well here in the way people deal with criticism. And to add another historical dimension to it: look or remember, for a quarter of a century everything is unchanging, solidified and molded, and from one day to the next revolution breaks out, with the result that things can be dull for another quarter of a century (see the Netherlands, before during and after the sixties).
What is happening here – and it can also be read daily in the newspapers – is something like ignoring memory, systematically concealing the past, denying traditions. People are literally staring blindly at the present.
In summary, one can say that people have too long toes on one side of the border and no toes at all on the other side of the border.
How would such a thing come about, I wonder. Freudian speaking, such behavior falls under the category of complexes: the inferiority or superiority complex. In both cases, it involves a poor handling of one’s own image, and of authority. It betrays an inherent insecurity about one’s own image: on the one hand it is ignored, on the other hand it is too emphatically affirmed…. Yes it must be something like that. For an intellectual, that is not a pleasant or stimulating atmosphere to thrive in. But then again, the intellectual obeys his appropriation not because he likes it so much, but because he now has no other way.
I also wonder if this behavior has something to do with the size of the country or the culture? Is this pathological insecurity or the they exaggerated self-assurance the fate of small countries? I know too little about Denmark already, and I would like to know more about it in this context. In Austria, yes, there too I always detect a quasi-hysteria around the phenomenon of criticism and self-criticism (see, to take just one example, Thomas Bernhard). And Switzerland exhibits a strange mixture of Flemish and Dutch in this regard: Dürrenmatt and Frisch; it was as if they had to do their work in a Flemish inn. Everything was allowed, it didn’t hurt anybody anyway: Frisch and Dürrenmatt, you know, our greatest writers. But apart from that, you couldn’t say a bad word about the Swiss system, or you got wind of it. It was, because it is changing. Critical analyses of the phenomenon of Switzerland are appearing in abundance, mostly written by Swiss people themselves. Could it be the end of that arrogant complacency, which I know and recognize so well in the Netherlands, a country that has so much affinity with the mountain country, but would not want to be put on the same footing with it for any money in the world. The curious thing about the phenomenon of Switzerland is that only good things could be said and thought about the overarching whole (the myth of Switzerland), but that one canton does not let the other see the light in its eyes. The point of view of Switzerland and that of the canton are two totally different worlds in Switzerland. They mark the Swiss schizophrenia that may well become ours after 1992. (Which is just to say that we have a lot to “learn” from Switzerland…. )
I have outlined the clinical picture. Is there even now such a thing as a therapy? The malaise clearly finds its cause in this that the relationship with the “other” is not healthy. One thinks or behaves in terms of “more” or “less” (-worthiness). One compares oneself explicitly (Flanders) or implicitly (the Netherlands) with the others. There is no need to. Being different from the other is enough. There is really no need for comparison. Let’s just be as we are, and do as we do. Preferably with quite a bit of self-analysis and self-criticism. Because that is what is lacking in both of our conceptions of the whole area of criticism. I experienced this, when I was still teaching, repeatedly with students: first they were reluctant to criticize (the conscious Dutch false humility: who am I to? and so on; a refined form of intellectual laziness) then once they had “accepted” that it is legitimate to criticize, they thought that criticism meant expressing an opinion. But opinion is not even the most important part of the whole critical activity. Much more important and a great deal more difficult, of course, is the labor that must precede it: the painstaking, sharp and not-so-simple analysis. Only then does an opinion follow. And whether or not the criticism is constructive, as it is called, is also already of secondary importance. The analysis of a situation, of a phenomenon, of a specific act is, at least for the intellectual, by definition a constructive activity. It requires formation, intelligence, sensitivity, study and effort. The opposite of spouting opinions. After all, as any pub landlord knows, so can anyone who has had a glass too many. (Frightening thought: would these so zealous countries be intellectually lazy?)
I can already imagine the reactions to this piece. In Flanders: “yes, yes, very true, we all knew that already. Go on like this. . “. In the Netherlands: silent indignation. And then: ” Yes, but in France …. “. No, for once it was not about France, not about Germany, nor about England. It was about us. Only I have been guilty of wanting to compare Flanders with the Netherlands, and the Netherlands with Flanders. Apples with lemons. Or as I often say: other planets. And why couldn’t and shouldn’t you be another planet?
“Maybe both have the same mother,” he suggested, “But then the fathers are from different continents anyway.”
