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Ron Eyerman, The Assassination of Theo van Gogh: from Social Drama to Cultural Trauma

2010; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s12134-010-0136-6

1874-6365

Hans Vermeulen,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

Though Ron Eyerman considers the assassination of Van Gogh to be a central and emblematic event in the recent and the turbulent political developments in the Netherlands he does not restrict his analysis to this event.He throws his nets much wider.The Assassination of Theo van Gogh is a detailed study of an important period in recent Dutch history.Besides van Gogh and Mohammed Bouyeri, his murderer, other protagonists in these developments such as Pim Fortuyn and Hirsi Ali get almost equal attention.Theo van Gogh was cruelly murdered on November 2 in 2004 by a second-generation Moroccan immigrant who had become a devout and radical Muslim.Van Gogh was a controversial public figure who used a rather vulgar language to provoke Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.The last group he sometimes referred to as 'goatfuckers'.In the first chapter of his book, Eyerman presents his approach.He promises a multidimensional analysis, 'offering not only a thick description, but also a thick explanation' (p.23).He utilizes three perspectives: a performative approach focusing on the prediscursive performance of action, discourse theory used especially in the analysis of how events like the murder of Theo van Gogh are represented in the media and theories of social drama and cultural trauma.These theories are used to assess the long-term effects of a series of dramatic events, such as the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, and the screening of the controversial film Submission by van Gogh and Hirsi Ali.The author develops his arguments in the following order.First, he describes and analyzes the murder, its direct context and representation in the media.Then he turns to the 'perpetrators and victims', their life histories, the historical setting, and what they have come to symbolise.In the next chapters, the murder of van Gogh and some other dramatic events are put in a broader historical and global context, relating them to the debate