'Zorg ervoor, leef in de problemen': De affectieve dominant in de hedendaagse Nederlandstalige poëzie

Abstract

Demeyer and Vitse argue that contemporary Dutch-language fiction reveals a dominant focus on affective questions and concerns about attachment and connection to the world and to the other. This article aims to examine to what extent this hypothesis of the ‘affective dominant’ applies to contemporary Dutch-language poetry. It verifies this hypothesis in close readings of three recently published poetry collections, by Frank Keizer, Maxime Garcia Diaz and Dewi de Nijs Bik. We argue that these poetry collections also evoke a subjective experience of the world which is primarily affective, in the sense that it is primarily an experience of being violently and painfully affected by the world. The subject is exposed to the violence of political depression (Keizer), to the violence of misogynist digital culture (Garcia Diaz) and to the violence of intergenerational (post)colonial wounding (De Nijs Bik). In these poetry collections this affective focus is – more explicitly than in contemporary fiction – overdetermined by political and ideological critique. We contend that the affective is epistemologically mediated by frames derived from neomarxism, postcolonialism and gender critique. This epistemological mediation affords the possibility to move towards a reparative position of healing, connection and resilience.