The Assassination of Theo Van Gogh: From Social Drama to Cultural Trauma (review)

In The Assassination of Theo Van Gogh, Ron Eyerman offers an analysis of the 2004 murder of the Dutch filmmaker. In this work, Eyerman resists seeing the incident as a senseless individualistic or a collective act of violence. Instead the author presents an analysis of the murder as social drama and ultimately as cultural trauma. Eyerman defends this approach by citing its ability to uncover the layers of meanings surrounding the critical "tear" in the social fabric presented by the van Gogh murder.

In pursuing a multi-layered social drama analysis, Eyerman first employs performance theory. With this the author highlights the main players, the specifics and the setting of the murder. Van Gogh was killed by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent. Once a prime example of successful integration, Bouyeri is now interpreted as an example of the integration problem posed by immigrants to the Netherlands. In this first layer analysis, Eyerman also explores the role played by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee living in the Netherlands and a prominent proponent of Muslim women's rights. (The note attached to van Gogh's body by the killer was actually addressed to Ali.) And as part of his performance analysis, Eyerman reviews the significance of the daytime rush hour setting of the murder and the "hardware" of the murder: a gun, a small machete and a filet knife. (Eyerman argues the filet knife was meant to represent a dagger in the heart of Western civilization.) To uncover yet another layer of meaning, Eyerman also uses discourse theory to examine the murder. Here the author considers how the murder was presented by the mass media and transformed into a public event. Lastly, Eyerman examines the historical underpinning of the murder and considers how Dutch national identity and collective memory (particularly the ghosts of WWII) contributed to the emotional response to the van Gogh murder.

While pursing this multilayered analysis the author presents many intriguing ideas and connections between the van Gogh murder and other timely and overriding issues. Those focused on the current immigration debates will find much of interest in Eyerman's assessment of the role that immigration played in framing the murder. The killer of van Gogh was the son of "guest workers," a group that has recently morphed into the status of a problem population. Eyerman's analysis also offers a religious angle on the murder; Mohammed B is presented as a keyboard terrorist and a self-proclaimed martyr for the cause of Islamic fundamentalism who may well have seen the murder of van Gogh as a logical extension of the Rushdie affair and the 1989 fatwa issued by Khomeini. The murder is also analyzed with an eye to national identity and a clash of civilizations. The lack of, or problematic meaning of, a Dutch national identity is seen by Eyerman as critical in the movement of the murder from an "occurrence" to an event of cultural trauma. On all these fronts, the book offers compelling reading.

In stepping back and viewing the book as a whole, however, the many angles and twists taken — while compelling reading — are nonetheless a major weakness. With so many angles explored, a clear linear progression is lacking. Instead each angle functions as a digression that keeps the flow of the analysis starting and stopping, leaving the reader caught in an endless loop with a constantly changing focus. In his analysis, Eyerman also utilizes much specialized jargon, which he takes great care to define. Yet, this jargon-steeped approach with its necessary clarifications may be yet another reason why the progress of the work is impeded. Throughout the book, the author also poses countless questions one could raise about the murder. To be sure, this strategy reveals the author is "open" to presenting a full array of possible interpretations. But ultimately the endless questions stall the discussion.

Eyerman maintains that cultural trauma analysis...