The Dutch writer Louis Couperus published De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force), his classic portrait of life in the Dutch East Indies, within a year of the first publication of Joseph Conrad’s Heart...Show moreThe Dutch writer Louis Couperus published De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force), his classic portrait of life in the Dutch East Indies, within a year of the first publication of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). From at least the early 1890s, their careers and preoccupations converge to the extent that Couperus has on occasion been referred to as the Dutch Conrad. While the setting and style of their keynote works often contrast in distinct ways, they align through the subtle yet unmistakeable anti-colonial critique they deliver, not least in their representation of degenerate white protagonists. To this, The Hidden Force adds an overripe and decadent Wildean style which invites a queer or oblique postcolonial reading, as this essay will demonstrate. This style allows Couperus to adopt a more radical position vis-a-vis the Dutch colonial presence in the Indies than has hitherto been considered to be the case, or that the plot mechanics of white degeneration make possible – one compares in interesting ways with the inescapable ambiguities of Conrad’s colonial fiction. Show less
