Diving into the Past: Cognitive Tools for Developing Resistant Literacy in a Postcolonial Dutch-Antillean Hybrid Novel

This article proposes a toolkit for developing a culturally critical—resistant—reading method building on cognitive cultural studies and feminist hermeneutics. It illustrates the potential for resistant literacy fostered by a cognitively challenging text, De duik (The Plunge). A postcolonial, anti-imperialist text, The Plunge foregrounds a resistant way of dealing with issues of displacement, slavery, and cultural rifts. As the analysis demonstrates, this text intermingles the past and the present, the personal and the communal, while questioning the boundaries of "us" and "them." The analysis proffers cognitive strategies geared toward resistant reading that are generally applicable, such as challenging stereotypes, undermining cultural hegemony, and stimulating Theory of Mind.