Preface
Not a foreword. That would be by another author. This is an author’s preface: reasons for undertaking the work, acknowledgements, and permissions.
Not an introduction. That comes later and longer, 2 thirds the length of 4 of the book’s 5 chapters, 1 half that of the longest.
These are brief prefatory remarks. 2 paragraphs of reasons for this undertaking make up 1 half of 3 pages.
This book is about the idea of the Vietnamese South.
May I kibitz. When the United States of America occupied southern Viet Nam in 1965 the Republic of Viet Nam had claimed for 10 years already the entire nation now governed from Ha Noi. The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam had claimed the same dominion for 20.
Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem, the 2 contestants best known to the world, were neighbors of similar background from the central region, the seat of government for 1 hundred and 50 years and change. The struggle of their nation was complicated grown-up life.
Leave the quarrel of first and second grade at the children’s table in the USA. Mind your manners.
If you aren’t going to speak Vietnamese please stop saying “North Vietnam” or “South Vietnam.” There never have been any such nations. Dine with Philip Taylor and attend to the conversation of his friends.
This book is about the idea of the Vietnamese South. In a country where nationalism runs deep,
One-nation nationalism. Nobody tried to lead Annam, Cochinchine, and Tonkin each out separately or together from under the rule of Paris. The Indochinese Communist Party became 3 national parties without remark by those not directly involved.
Those national minorities who fought against Ha Noi or Saigon fought for the other’s claim on both cities. The first thing the Vietnamese Communists did after unification was to beat back their ally the People’s Army of China, their fraternal party the Khmer Rouge, and drive diasporic Chinese from Saigon.
In a country where nationalism runs deep, which has been divided politically and has experienced devastating military conflicts, the question of regional identities is controversial and illuminating.
Well, yeah, says this Southerner. We have talked about ourselves for 1 hundred and 50 years now.
Lately in North Carolina it is matter of whether or not you slow-cook your pig in ketchup as well as vinegar and which shade of blue you like your basketball. The controversies illuminate only that we have tired of debate over everything else.
In a country where nationalism runs deep, which has been divided politically and has experienced devastating military conflicts, the question of regional identities is controversial and illuminating. Making regional comparisons is a common practice among Vietnamese people.
So, a unifying practice?
Making regional comparisons is a common practice among Vietnamese people. In the post-war years, after the country was politically unified, southern identity became a critical topic for discussion.
Again, we did the same thing here after unification. Looking back through our library, the 1 thing we all did all the time from 1898 to 1948 was not talk about the 1 issue that structured everyday life and policy.
For instance, we held fascinating discussions across decades about unifying the Protestant denominations of the South under primitive Christianity without ever considering whether to treat our neighbors as ourselves. Because a third neighbor would come around and kill you.
In the post-war years, after the country was politically unified, southern identity became a critical topic for discussion. Encountering this debate while in Vietnam in the early 1990s, I found the identity of many features associated with the region such as its popular music, markets, commodities, urbanised lifestyles, and historical sequence of regimes, to be hotly contested.
I was in Ha Noi when Philip was in Saigon, with much less language and far fewer friends. I ran around with my girlfriend and her buddies playing with a few writers I worked with. The South came up only in conversation when the older authors spoke of visiting Saigon for the first time after victory in 1975.
They all said the exact same thing they each had worked out individually, in that startling Ha Noi way, that they were blown away by the diversity of thought. They were speaking of Saigon under direct military occupation. What impressed my friends were books.
Encountering this debate while in Vietnam in the early 1990s, I found the identity of many features associated with the region such as its popular music, markets, commodities, urbanised lifestyles, and historical sequence of regimes, to be hotly contested. There were great discrepancies in power between the protagonists, whose views I discuss here, some having the power to overwhelm or silence the voice of others.
One of my Ha Noi friends lived under the shadow of the police one day rolling a truck over her. None of them never did, because some other cop would warn her.
Another had abandoned his writing after soldiers showed up, guns out, to rifle his house for manuscripts. By the time we met he had devoted himself entirely to business and to good relations with the police, who admired his work.
Both authors heaped scorn on 2 other friends of mine, as fine a man and woman and writers as you may find, who were also irrevocably agents of the ministries of Interior and Exterior, as I am of the establishment of the United States of America.
Philip is a kind and thoughtful man telling you about living in a revolutionary police state. There his friends engaged in debate within bounds, welcoming him in as he brought their thought to the outside world.
That is a great crime against the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam and the Vietnamese Communist Party in charge. Peaceful evolution.
They enforce that law as we do speed limits and everything else, selectively, unfairly, to keep the peace. Philip is telling you about the life of most ideas most of the time.
There were great discrepancies in power between the protagonists, whose views I discuss here, some having the power to overwhelm or silence the voice of others. As a participant of sorts in this debate, my own treatment of southern identity as plural unavoidably assails the authority of any given position.
He is a participant of a specific sort, an anthropologist practicing ethnography. We advance knowledge, producing evidence and developing insight, by participant observation.
No other profession finds that method authoritative but everyone uses our work since no one else does it. We ourselves can be shy about the authority of our senses and our thoughts but our friends come around sooner or later and ask what do you think? Are you participating or not?
Got any observations? To reply may be awkward since your whole purpose was to learn what they think. Then time goes by and you find yourself answering questions from their adult children or hearing your early, mistaken, observations from their students.
You all cope together in grownup speech. The abiding difficulty is that the investigator has paid attention to many different people making assertions and assumptions as they earn a living raise families and win distinction.
There is no way around it. We come to the republic with Diogenes to debase the currency. You want authority, find an Aristotle, a political scientist, a sociologist. They engage in authoritative discourse. We make friends.
As a participant of sorts in this debate, my own treatment of southern identity as plural unavoidably assails the authority of any given position. Regarding Vietnam as a complex country with a vigorous intellectual scene I have attended to disputes as much as unexpected convergences of thinking.
Why authorities and friends give us rice.
Regarding Vietnam as a complex country with a vigorous intellectual scene I have attended to disputes as much as unexpected convergences of thinking. These plural voices are a vivid point of entry into southern Vietnam’s turbulent post-war history, the social history of ideas, shifts in state ideology, the impact of political and economic changes and the contrasting fortunes of urban and rural communities.
No doubt. But that last sentence sounds like a grant application. Then comes another sentence like it, then a whole second paragraph, then 2 pages of thanks and permissions.
Participating in a modern research university leaves its mark on our observations as surely as speaking Vietnamese. But the first sentence of the preface and of the whole report is what I am here for.
This book is about the idea of the Vietnamese South.
This is the second Viet Nam letter addressed to Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam’s South, by Philip Taylor. The first appeared on February 29, 2024.
3 previous Viet Nam letters have addressed the anthropologist’s later work Goddess on the Rise: Pilgrimage and Popular Religion in Vietnam, on June 27, August 24, and September 26, 2024.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.
This call and response approach to reviewing is very effective. Similar to what a group of us Tiananmen veterans are doing re: contemporary Chinese culture: remedial history.