oa Comparative occupation, implication, and resistance. Algeria and Indonesia in relation to France and the Netherlands

This position paper presents ongoing research on transnational connections across memory studies and postcolonial studies in relation to Dutch and French (anti)colonialism following World War II. We conduct a comparative analysis of cinematic and literary representations depicting resistance, collaboration, and implication in relation to Nazism and colonialism across France and Algeria and the Netherlands and Indonesia. We foreground implication and a decolonial stance, as well as the specific comparative contexts of Algeria and Indonesia in relation to (settler) colonialism and occupation. Our research aims to unpack the contradiction of liberation from and resistance to Nazi and Japanese rule in France and colonial Indonesia thanks to military support from Algeria and Indonesia, while these countries continued to be (re-)occupied after World War II by those they aided and liberated. It also seeks to critique the over-emphasis on Dutch and French resistance to Nazism and insistence on collective victimhood under occupation. In doing so, it reveals how this relates to the refusal to own up to colonial legacies and contemporary racism in the Netherlands and France, which perceive and project themselves as tolerant secular liberal democracies. Finally, it will examine anti-fascist and anti- colonial alliances within the framework of ‘differentiated solidarity’.