Fanon in South Vietnam

From maso@wisc.edu Thu Apr 28 10:14:34 2005

Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 12:10:51 -0500

From: Mitch Aso <maso@wisc.edu>

Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: [Vsg] Fanon in South Vietnam

Hi-

I am interested in the practice of psychiatry, and its relation to nationalism, in South Vietnam between 1945 and 1954. In particular, I am curious if anyone knows of psychiatrists in South Vietnam producing works similar to Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks, or had been inspired to write their own books after reading Black Skins, White Masks, which came out in French in 1952? If not, then why was the revolution not "psychologized" in the way that the Algerian revolution was (at least by Fanon).

I've found out that Bac Si Nguyen Van Hoai headed the mental hospital at Bien Hoa from 1950 to 1955, a position very similar to Fanon's in Algeria and that there were mental hospitals in Cho Quan (Saigon) and Hue (maybe the same one that Prof. Vinh Sinh walked by as a child). David Marr has pointed out that at least a few writers in Indochina were using Freud's theories to diagnose society's ills, so there is precedent for this particular movement of ideas.

I'm guessing that the influence of socialist thinkers on the anti-colonial movement muted enthusiams for psychological and psychoanalytic critiques of colonialism. I also suppose that the Saigon elite's relative weakness in the fight for power in a post-colonial Vietnam may have something to do with the lack of a psychological critique of colonialism. But maybe these works were produced and then, post-1954, received little attention. I would love to hear any leads that you may have.

Thanks!

Mitch

University of Wisconsin-Madison

From mark-sidel@uiowa.edu Thu Apr 28 15:43:31 2005

Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:43:12 GMT

From: Mark Sidel <mark-sidel@uiowa.edu>

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fanon in South Vietnam

These are issues that the inimitable Nguyen Thi Oanh in Saigon would have views on. I do not have her contact information at hand, but perhaps others can provide it....

Mark Sidel

From thompsonc2@southernct.edu Sun May 1 07:54:26 2005

Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 10:52:06 -0400

From: Michele Thompson <thompsonc2@southernct.edu>

Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fanon in South Vietnam

Dear Mitch,

You might try to contact Narquis Barack (I think I have the name spelled correctly) about this. I think she is still at Harvard finishing up her diss and you should be able to find an address of some sort through them. Also there was a man, French I believe, who gave a paper on psychiatric institutes in the south at Euroviet III in Amsterdam in 1997. Perhaps John Kleinen has the name of this scholar?

Sorry I can't be of more help with this,

cheers

Michele

From dduffy@email.unc.edu Wed May 4 10:32:45 2005

Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 13:32:20 -0400

From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fanon in South Vietnam

A realistic appraisal of Fanon in Viet Nam might start with a consideration of Viet Nam in Fanon, that is, a look at the relations of Tran Duc Thao with Fanon in France.

Thao was a philosopher. Vietnamese intellectuals react to his name with this reflex: "The only great Vietnamese philosopher." By this they seem to mean that he is the only Vietnamese to take part in what a Buddhist would recognize as a lineage, the line of instruction that starts with Kant and ends up in a seminar room on the Left Bank.

Regarding this particular lineage as "philosophy" is an example of what Fanon was talking about when he spoke of the colonized mind.

Within that lineage, people will know that Thao was cited as an early influence by Jacques Derrida. Jacques paid that homage well after he had conquered the College de France and the literature departments of the United States, late in life when he paid attention to the fact that he himself was an Algerian Jew, another colonized mind.

In the thick of life, rather than in retrospect, Thao had been a junior colleague of Sartre, a textual scholar of Husserl in his own right, who quarreled with the Sartre over the interpretation of Heidegger. Thao engaged more productively with Simone De Beauvoir and, I expect, with Fanon, in that magazine Beauvoir edited that Fanon published in.

Thao rallied from Paris to the revolution in Ha Noi. He spoke up for critical thought there, was silenced, and loyally spent the war years in poverty and silence. So he had nothing to do with the abundant existentialism in the South, as a man, although both his French texts and his Ha Noi dissident ones did reach Saigon.

But as I say he likely had something to do with Fanon himself before that man's texts got to VN. Shawn McHale has a great introduction to the life and work of Tran Duc Thao in the Journal of Asian Studies, if you wanted to look into it.

Dan

Dan Duffy

Viet Nam Literature Project

5600 Buck Quarter Road

Hillsborough, NC 27278

tel 919-383-7274, 11 AM - 3 PM Eastern

email dduffy@email.unc.edu