Disengaging culturalism: Artistic strategies of young Muslims in the Netherlands

This ethnographic study examines how young Muslims in the Netherlands engage in artistic strategies that disengage from the culturalist logic of the Dutch dominant integration discourse. It investigates artistic production of young Muslims in the Netherlands from two main perspectives, as an exit strategy from the dominant discourse and as a process of authorship that yields emerging subjectivities. In relation to the first perspective, the study shows that exit strategies appear in two main guises: volatile and stable. While volatile forms of exit are susceptible to being made legible within the culturalist logic of the dominant discourse and thus to be incorporated within it, stable forms of exit resist this kind of incorporation, although this limits their potential to effect a form of political emancipation. Stable forms of exit often remain ignored within artistic institutions precisely because they are not legible in relation to the dominant discourse.
The perspective of authorship brings to the fore the generative dimensions of exit because it looks at the artworks that are produced and the subjectivities that are developed in this strategy. These subjectivities are analysed as liminoid phenomena that problematize the binary logic of the dominant discourse that is structured around classifications such as allochtoon – autochtoon, Western – non-Western, religious – secular, modern – backwards, etc. Authorship is understood as an embedded practice that is situated in a field of forces that impact upon it, which include material and environmental factors that the artists are confronted with, significant others such as supervisors, but also the larger socio-political arena.