Jun Lei Lee: Intruding on Collective Memory

There’s a inevitable sense of discomfort in studying a history that doesn’t belong to you. Removed from the immediacy of personal investment, you are rightfully relegated to a cautious interloper – treading carefully with the permissions you’ve been granted, and striving to respect the narratives that have been woven by those who can lay claim to the collective memory. This was reaffirmed for me throughout my time in the Netherlands, where I couldn’t help but feel out of place, constantly questioning and second-guessing my position as a foreign student wading in the murky depths of Dutch history and collective trauma.

More often than not, this was made clear in the barriers to knowledge and access for non-Dutch speakers. Before leaving the United States, I was determined to make my project as rooted in archival data as possible – which meant that I had bet large on accessing Dutch archival documents and previously written academic histories of the site. At every turn, I was reminded that the knowledge and information I was so keen on accessing was primarily, even exclusively, for domestic consumption and understanding. Academics who had written extensively in Dutch on the site returned my queries about English resources with gentle rebuffs and directions to more Dutch-only content. A paid yearlong membership to the Royal Library in the Hague bought me access to digital archives that was restricted to residents of the Netherlands, leaving me scrambling to download as much information I could determine to be even tangentially relevant before my flight left Schipol Airport. Afternoons in various municipal libraries and archives were spent at the mercy of my weak cellular data connection and the fickleness of the picture translate function of the Google Translate app.

The difficulties I faced during my time in the Netherlands became a keen reminder that as someone foreign to both the fraught history of the site and to the country itself, I needed to constantly check myself and my intentions to reflect my external position. In research and academia, where it is so easy to be overwhelmed and carried away by ideas and conceptually “good” intentions, it becomes necessary to constantly orientate oneself in relation to the subject of research and all those who may be affected by the work. In the Netherlands, these considerations were pushed to the forefront by obvious necessity – but actively thinking about my own positionality overseas reminded me to scrutinise myself and my intentions more carefully when I returned home to the dominant canon of English-language academia.

Above all, as I reflect on my weeks in the Netherlands, I feel infinitely indebted to the generous and patient municipal employees, curators, and volunteers who took interest in my research and offered their help. They helped me navigate Dutch-only online archives, provided English summaries of historical documents, and reached out to individuals in their network whom I could contact with questions. Research is anything but an individual pursuit, and this summer has been a sorely needed reminder to be grateful, optimistic, and a little more bold.

Excerpt from my project journal
“June 13th, after my first visit to National Monument Kamp Vught
Questions I have:

• Both the camp and prison regimes sought to dehumanize, humiliate, and break inmates. What are the qualitative differences between the two? Can we accept atrocities in the name of “punishment”, on the grounds of adequate suspicion, or national security?”