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Session 160: Myths, Memories, and the Vietnam War
Organizer: Olga Dror, Texas A&M University
Chair: Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University
Discussant: William S. Turley, Southern Illinois University
Keywords: Vietnam, war, memory, myths, narrative.
Three decades have passed since the end of the Vietnamese-American War, which has remained one of the most contentious topics in modern history. This panel concentrates on narratives of the Vietnam War, exploring what kinds of stories have been created and recycled and why, and how representations of the same events have changed since the end of the war. These papers aim to recover southern Vietnamese narratives that have been widely discredited or ignored by writers who have adopted the official Hanoi version of events. Wynn Wilcox’s paper will consider the alleged trip of Vietnamese emissary Bui Vien to the U.S. in 1873 and how it was brought back to life as an origin and an allegory of Vietnamese-American relations. Keith Taylor analyses how representations of national governments in Saigon have been incorporated into historical narratives that deny their legitimacy and suggests an alternative perspective. Olga Dror concentrates on the differences and similarities of portrayals of the war in literature written by northern and southern Vietnamese. These papers are united in their endeavor to expand representations of modern non-communist Vietnamese history, government, and literature against silencing denials of legitimacy. They seek contexts for viewing change in these representations from wartime through intervening years to the present. The panel hopes to recover Vietnamese definitions of a modern nation unacknowledged by the official view of the Hanoi government and by those who have followed that view.
The Myth of Bui Vien
Wynn William Wilcox, State University of New York, Potsdam
While giving a toast to a South Vietnamese delegation in March 1967, United States President Lyndon Johnson invoked the memory of the well-known voyage of Vietnamese emissary Bui Vien, who supposedly came to the United States and met with President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. Yet this voyage appears to be a myth concocted in the mind of historian and historical novelist Phan Tran Chuc, who had been criticized in the Hanoi press in the mid-1930s for fabricating numerous historical details.
Several inconsistencies confirm the fictitiousness of this story, such as the erroneous detail in Phan Tran Chuc’s original account that Bui Vien had actually met with President Lincoln in 1873, eight years after Lincoln’s death. What may be more interesting than its fabrication, however, is the tenacity with which this story is still believed despite clear questions about its authenticity. This paper proposes that the persistence of this myth throughout the U.S./Vietnam war and even to the present day is a function of the story’s symbolic, ideological power as an allegory of missed opportunity, and as a subtext to discussions about the role of the United States in South Vietnam, and as a precursor to renewed relations today. During the U.S.-Vietnam war era, this story was popularized, republished, and discussed by prominent politicians in Vietnam or the United States every time these relations reached a stage of flux or crisis: in 1945, 1952, 1963, and 1967, and it has reappeared in force again since 1996.
Narrating Saigon Politics
Keith Weller Taylor, Cornell University
The ways in which the various governments in Saigon between 1954 and 1975 have been described and incorporated into historical narratives have diverged not only according to the ideological positions of writers but also as a result of changing times and the changing memories of those who lived through those events. In general, the Saigon governments have not been seriously considered as having a history separate from U.S. policy. Saigon politics has not been taken as a legitimate expression of Vietnamese national leadership. Yet, the U.S. government decided to abandon the Ngo Dinh Diem government and other later governments because they were not considered to be sufficiently responsive to U.S. policy. Eventually, with the stabilization of a government that was loyal to the U.S., U.S. policy changed and that government was then criticized for not being sufficiently independent. The story of Saigon politics has been silenced beneath the clichés of corruption, incompetence, and neo-colonialism. This paper analyzes how narratives of the Saigon governments have changed through the years and suggests a way of remembering these governments as an important aspect of nationalist aspiration for those Vietnamese who did not favor the communist version of a modern Vietnamese nation. It is the story of non-communist politics amidst the tumult of a Cold War civil war.
From Opposition to Rapprochement: Views of the War in Vietnam from the North and the South
Olga Dror, Texas A&M University
Almost thirty years have elapsed since the end of the war in Vietnam, a war that more than anything else was a civil war. Divided during those years, how have Vietnamese come to terms with this page of their history, if at all? This paper will focus on perceptions of the war from the two opposing sides, the North and the South, as portrayed in literary works. I argue that in recent years there has been a rapprochement, albeit not mutual, between the two positions. While the positions of Southerners have remained relatively unchanged, the stance towards the war in some of the works of Northerners has significantly changed as romantics of revolution and independence have yielded place to disillusion with the results of the struggle, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, as alleviation of state control over intellectual activities has permitted more freedom of expression. The extent to which this literary rapprochement can be taken as an indication that the wounds of a divided nation are beginning to heal remains to be seen, but it might be a sign of the potential for reconciliation in the future.