Watery Relations: An Autoethnographic Counter-Narrative to the Dutch National Water Identity

• In Event: Navigating Educational Challenges

Abstract

This paper explores the colonial underpinnings of Dutch national identity by focusing on enactments of the nature-culture divide in dominant narratives within the education system. Using autoethnography and writing as inquiry, I deconstruct the dominant 'war against water' narrative by reflecting on my childhood flood experience. This paper critiques traditional portrayals of the Dutch relationship with water, rooted in water displacement and land reclamation, and exposes an ideology of human domination over nature. By thinking with posthumanism and new materialism, I challenge the passive view of nature as something to be used and call for the recognition of more-than-human agency. I highlight the potential for counter-narratives to resist the Dutch national water identity.

Author

• Emmeline Hoogland, Simon Fraser University