In November 2004, the controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh
was killed on a busy street in Amsterdam. A twenty-six-year-old
Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent shot van Gogh, slit his throat,
and pinned a five-page indictment of Western society to his body.
The murder set off a series of reactions, including arson against
Muslim schools and mosques. In "The Assassination of Theo van
Gogh," Ron Eyerman explores the multiple meanings of the murder and
the different reactions it elicited: among the Amsterdam-based
artistic and intellectual subculture, the wider Dutch public, the
local and international Muslim communities, the radical Islamic
movement, and the broader international community. After
meticulously analyzing the actions and reputations of van Gogh and
others in his milieu, the motives of the murderer, and the details
of the assassination itself, Eyerman considers the various
narrative frames the mass media used to characterize the killing.
Eyerman utilizes theories of social drama and cultural trauma to
evaluate the reactions to and effects of the murder. A social drama
is triggered by a public transgression of taken-for-granted norms;
one that threatens the collective identity of a society may develop
into a cultural trauma. Eyerman contends that the assassination of
Theo van Gogh quickly became a cultural trauma because it resonated
powerfully with the postwar psyche of the Netherlands. As part of
his analysis of the murder and reactions to it, he discusses
significant aspects of twentieth-century Dutch history, including
the country's treatment of Jews during the German occupation, the
loss of its colonies in the wake of World War II, its recruitment
of immigrant workers, and the failure of Dutch troops to protect
Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.
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