Colonial rhetorics of modernity in Vietnam: “The New” (Cái mới) in Vietnamese literature during the colonial period

Abstract

Much of colonial discourse relied polemically on the rhetoric of colonial modernity; meanwhile, behind the discursive and practical power of modernity is colonial exploitation. It asks how notions of the new novel, the new woman, and foreigners reflected and influenced Vietnamese intellectuals’ imagination about the Vietnamese nation and Vietnamese literature. In other words, the concepts of new women, new literature, or foreigners, based on the historicist view of humans and literature, helped to mask colonialism in the discourse of modernity, making it appear desirable and reasonable. This article argues that the participation of theorists, writers, critics, and journalists in metropolitan countries and colonies in articulating modernity went beyond its attached colonialist purpose to think and act for the “real” development of Vietnam intellectually, economically, and politically. This was meant to construct a national culture. As such, this article engages with a deconstructing approach, emphasising the historically specific context of colonial dependence in colonial Vietnam.