UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE The Rise and the Fall of Rabindranath Tagore in Vietnam A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies by Chi P. Pham June 2012 Thesis Committee: Prof. Mariam B. Lam, Chairperson Prof. Hendrik Maier Prof. Christina Schwenkel Prof. David Biggs Copyright by Chi P. Pham 2012 The Thesis of Chi P. Pham is approved: ------------------------------------- ------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Rise and the Fall of Rabindranath Tagore in Vietnam by Chi P. Pham Master of Arts, Graduate Program in Southeast Asian Studies University of California, Riverside, June 2012 Prof. Mariam B. Lam, Chairperson This thesis aims to explore the question of why Tagore's reception in Vietnam during the French colonial period was excluded and then selectively included into official Vietnamese cultural life today, inspired by the idea that power and knowledge are closely interconnected, so aptly summarized in Foucault’s phrase “all will to truth is already a will to power” (in Merquior, 209). By way of a critical reading of these receptions (articles, news, photos and literary writings) in primary sources including newspapers, books and journals produced during the French colonial period (1885- 1943), I will argue that they are manifestations of the colonial knowledge of "Annam- ness" produced by the French regime in order to gain control over Annam. This thesis re-imagines the myth of Tagore in socialist cultural products by bringing to the table its revised origins in colonial period. The return of such colonial knowledge in current literary and political life, which is for the very different purpose of transnational collaborations, as Foucault says, “make[s] a mockery of the idea of iv freedom” (in Merquior 117). The question is not about the individual freedom but about those who govern statements/knowledge and in what way they do this to constitute current politically acceptable propositions. Not many Vietnamese people know that the current knowledge of Tagore, brought up in connection with globalization, was neither a change of content nor a refutation of the legacy of colonial knowledge (cf. Merquior 112). Rather, the current appreciation of Tagore is the revision of the colonial knowledge of Tagore; the essence of the later has been retained, but terms are modified in accordance with the current discourse of globalization. The recollection of the knowledge of Orientalist Romanticism in Vietnamese textbooks and newspapers and in daily life is indicative of the “technology of power” of the socialist regime. The thesis is a postcolonial case study of colonial knowledge in Vietnam. v Table of Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Section 1 The Presence of Tagore in Cochin China and Tonkin in the French Colonial Period… 5 Section 2 The Reception of Tagore and the Colonial Construction of the Native Figure– the “Order of Power” (Foucault)……………………………………………………………………..21 Section 3 The Reception of Tagore and Emerging Questions of Nation-Building in Cochin China- the ‘Battle for Truth’ (Foucault) …………………………………………………….36 Section 4 The Reception of Tagore and the Fabricated “Numbness” in Vietnamese Writings: The Effects of Power…………………………………………………………………….50 Section 5 vi The Reception of Tagore in the Post-August Revolution Cultural Productions of Vietnam– Other Regimes of Truth …………………………………………………. 73 Conclusion Continuing numbness… “Colonial power is everywhere” (Foucault)………………..84 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………. 86 vii Introduction On June 21, 1929, Rabindranath Tagore, Indian writer, first Asian awardee of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913), made a stop-over in Saigon (Cochin China) and created literary and political discussions in contemporary Vietnam, at the time of French colony. This visit was finally recalled multiple times during an international conference on Rabindranath Tagore in Hanoi, November 2011: it had never been mentioned in official textbooks of literature and history in Vietnam during the socialist regime, from 1945 to the present. Generations of Vietnamese academics have assumed that the reception of Tagore began in 1961 with An anthology of Tagore’s poems (on the anniversary of 100th birthday of Tagore, a 53-page anthology of Tagore's poems translated by The Association of Vietnamese Writers (Literature Publishing House), and R Tagore, a publication of Cao Huy Đỉnh and Lacon of the National Commission of Social Sciences (Literature Publishing House). Văn học Ấn Độ [Indian Literature] (Lưu Đức Trung), the only textbook of Indian literature for Vietnamese students, first published in 1982, does not refer to the fact that Tagore was literarily and politically known in Vietnam in the colonial period. 1 This thesis aims to explore the question of why Tagore's reception1 in Vietnam during the French colonial period was excluded and then selectively included into official Vietnamese cultural life today, inspired by the idea that power and knowledge are closely interconnected, so aptly summarized in Foucault’s phrase ‘all will to truth is already a will to power’. By way of a critical reading of different kinds of reactions (articles, news, photos and literary writings) toward Tagore and his works in primary sources including newspapers, books and journals produced during the French colonial period (1885- 1943), I will argue that they are manifestations of the colonial knowledge of "Annarn- ness" produced by the French regime in order to gain control over Annam. This thesis re-imagines the myth of Tagore in socialist cultural products by bringing to the table its revised origins in the colonial period. The return of such colonial knowledge in current literary and political life, which is for the very different purpose of transnational collaborations and global economic immersion, as Foucault says, “makes a mockery of the idea of freedom” (in Merquior 117). The question is not about individual freedom but about those who govern statements/knowledge and in what ways they do this to constitute current politically acceptable propositions. Not many Vietnamese people know that the current knowledge about Tagore, brought up in connection with globalization is neither a change of content nor a refutation of the legacy of colonial 1 The term “reception” used in the thesis implies two meanings: one is a real function held by the French government in cooperation with Vietnamese intellectuals to welcome Tagore in 1929. The second meaning, in some way, shares Hall’s theory of reception, which focuses on active responses from the host part (of French officials, Vietnamese intellectuals, Indian and labor people – “audience”) regarding Tagore’s visit, and Tagore’s texts and ideologies (“a text”). These responses include negotiation" and "opposition" based on “specific historical context” (“discussive formation”) and cultural and political background of the “audience” (Stuart Hall, 44-7) 2 knowledge (cf. Merquior 112). Rather, the current appreciation of Tagore is a revision of the colonial knowledge of Tagore; the essence of the latter is retained, but the terms are modified in accordance with current discourses of globalization. A recollection of the knowledge of Orientalist Romanticism in Vietnamese textbooks and newspapers and in depictions of daily life is indicative of the “technology of power” (Foucault, “March 17, 1976” 242) of the socialist regime. That power and that knowledge, as described by Foucault, “dovetails into it [the former disciplinary technology], integrate it, modify to some extent and above all, use it by short of inflating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques” (Foucault, “March 17, 1976” 242). This thesis is postcolonial case study of colonial knowledge in Vietnam. The thesis describes the controversial presentations of Tagore in Cochinchina and Tonkin (respectively currently Southern Vietnam and Northern Vietnam) (Section 1), and it analyzes the supposed expectations of the construction of the Orientalized figure of Annam, which was crafted as the home of lofty religions and therefore the land of spirituality, reinforced constantly in colonial discourse and institutions (newspapers, education system, the media, and the flux of political and economic ideologies) in the reception of Tagore (Section 2). Members of the Tagore welcoming event included French officials, French-educated natives and Tagore himself, all of whom appear to have lamented the disappearance of the cultural values of Annam, which had some of their roots in Indian civilization. That supposition, which is resonant with the plan to restore the “declining native Powers!” (Roberts 421) – or Indianess and Asianness - and led by the French colonial government of Indochina under the leadership of the Governor- 3 General, General Pierre Pasquier, in 1929, negotiated the growing sentiment of lost "Oriental" values among Western academics since the late eighteenth century. As will be later explained, the construction of Tagore's reception failed in offering practical ideological trajectories for rising nationalisms (Section 3), but succeeded in promoting and maintaining a kind of spirituality or intellectual "numbness" around notions of Annam and notions of the Oriental