Sunken Red: Inscribing the Pacific War as a Cultural Trauma into Dutch Cultural Memory

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bezonken Rood, a novel by the Dutch author Jeroen Brouwers published in 1981 and translated as Sunken Red in 1988, has long been the subject of a fierce debate regarding the Pacific War in the former Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). The novel, a work of autofiction, aimed to bring the Pacific War, which was considered ‘an omitted war’ at the time, into the public eye. Despite the novel’s claim to be true to life, critics identified upon its publication numerous historical inaccuracies, with the most significant critique being that the Pacific War was erroneously depicted as equivalent to the Holocaust. I will study both the novel and debate: I will examine the ways in which the Pacific War is represented and remediated in the novel; and I will analyse the ways in which the novel has contributed to the inscription of the Pacific War as a cultural trauma into Dutch cultural memory. Throughout my analysis, I will draw on concepts derived from the fields of autobiographical writing, critical trauma studies, cultural memory studies, and cultural trauma studies.