BEWEGING, ZELFBEELD EN DE ANDER IN EEN INTERCULTURELE LITERAIRE TEKST: YEMMA VAN MOHAMMED BENZAKOUR

Debates over the multicultural society have been going on in the Netherlands for over 40 years now. Public discourse centers generally around multiculturalism and its impact on the Dutch society. The core of these issues is being formed by a general concern and fear in the immigrant hosting autochtonous majority with regard to movement and change in their culture, selfimage, the other and national identity. In the framework of an intercultural literary text, Yemma of Mohammed Benzakour, the son of a Moroccan immigrant parents in the Netherlands, this study will focus on intercultural and intracultural movement, which leads occasionally to intercultural harmony and disagreement; intracultural homogeneous and heterogeneous structure formation. Also the theoretical perspective, which is gained from the field literature (Scheffer; Knecht enz.) will be tested against the personal data, presented by Mohammed Benzakour as a result of his personal experience at a Dutch hospital. It will be demonstrated that the main change focuses on the intercultural conflict (72 %) and on the intracultural heterogeneous structure formation (65 %). These results show clearly that a cross-cultural encounter is a serious challenge for both cultures and a changing movement within a particular culture. In the framework of this book, conflicts pave the way to assimilation of minorities.