A History of Gender in Colonial and Contemporary Vietnam by Quang

From Red Lights to Red Flags: A History of Gender in Colonial and Contemporary Vietnam by Quang-Anh Richard Tran A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Peter Zinoman, Co-Chair Professor Michael Lucey Professor Ramona Naddaff Fall 2011 1 Abstract From Red Lights to Red Flags: A History of Gender in Colonial and Contemporary Vietnam By Quang-Anh Richard Tran Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric University of California, Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Peter Zinoman, Co-Chair This dissertation argues that the public discourse of Vietnam‘s periods of modernity—the late French colonial era (1930-1940) and that of the post-socialist decades (1986-2005)— produced interlocking notions of what I call queer subjects, subjects who oppose or exceed a normative understanding of heterosexual reproduction. The dissertation posits, however, a diachronic rupture in the dominant meaning of queer between these two periods. Whereas the former exhibited a capacious vision of gender and sexuality, one that pushed the imagined frontiers of the human body, the post-socialist decades marked a retreat to a static notion of mythic tradition that pathologized and purged queer bodies through recourse to a late nineteenth- century European discourse of gender-inversion, the notion of a man ―trapped‖ in a women‘s body or vice versa. To demonstrate this change, the first chapter argues that the normative meaning of gender and sexuality in late colonial Vietnam was far more dynamic and expansive than the contemporary scholarship has acknowledged. The second chapter maintains that the sexual regime that Foucault and others scholars have identified in Europe reaches its limit in the Vietnamese colony. The third and final chapter demonstrates the emergence of this sexual regime, albeit in transmuted form, during Vietnam‘s post-socialist decades (1986-2005). Together these chapters support the overall argument of a historical rupture in the cultural meaning of queer genders and sexualities between the period of late French colonialism and post-socialism. In reconstructing this rupture, the dissertation aims to de-familiarize contemporary practices and commitments and, by so doing, illuminate viable alternative forms of gendered and sexual life in twentieth-century Vietnam. i Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………….. ii Preface……………………………………………………………………… iv Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 2…………………………………………………………………… 37 Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………… 71 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….. 102 Bibliography………………………………………………………………... 104 ii Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my committee for their support without which this project would never have come to fruition. Thank you to Peter Zinoman for his exemplary mentoring through the years. Despite his many commitments, he always made himself available whenever I needed his advice, regardless of which corner of the globe I was in at the moment. His graduate seminars remain some of the best I have taken for their truly lively discussion and rigorous attention to historical argumentation. Through him, I learned to appreciate the critical resources that historiography could offer, the delicate craft of narrating the past and, above all, the immense responsibility entailed as a ―restorer‖ of cultural memory. Thank you to Michael Lucey for his commitment to the field of sexuality studies, critical feedback and encouraging advice through the years and to Ramona Naddaff who agreed to be part of the committee late in the project. Finally, I am enormously grateful to Judith Butler, who read every word of the dissertation, for her challenging questions and tireless faith in me and the project. When the going got tough, she opened up her office and dazzling library, providing me the space, time and resources to finish. Among many other things, I learned from her the cultivation of the arts of living. Whether in Washington, D.C., or Paris, she held some of the most intellectually stimulating dinner conversations, in which philosophy and critical thought were as much essential ingredients for living, breathing and thriving as the meal itself. Above all, I am most grateful for her steadfast patience, virtue, humor and wisdom. In the Rhetoric Department, I have many people to whom I am indebted. I wish to thank Trinh Minh Ha for her eye-opening graduate seminar on postcoloniality, exemplary interdisciplinary work, and for her inspiring presence in the academy; Linda Williams, for serving as my qualifying exam chair; Marianne Constable, for her dedication to teaching and advising; Maxine Fredrickson and Marcus Norman for countless administrative support; Michael Wintroub for his advocacy and research advice: I still remember the time when we bumped into each other during a coffee break at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He understood the challenges of archival work and provided some practical and useful tips. At the time, it almost did seem as if our department temporarily relocated to Paris. A special thanks goes to Tamara Loos who went out of her way to serve as the senior respondent on a panel I convened entitled, ―States of Desire: Sexual Cultures in Southeast Asia‖ at the Association of Asian Studies conference in 2011. Her rigorous scholarship remains a model that I can only hope to approximate. Other faculty and people whom I wish to acknowledge include Paola Bacchetta, Anne Cheng, Barrie Thorne, Sau-Ling Wong, Penny Edwards, Juana Rodriguez, Robert Kaufmann, Daniel Boyarin, Pheng Cheah, D. Rita Alfonso, Yen Le Espiritu, Agathe Larcher-Goscha, Francois Guillemot, Lisa Rofel, Gail Hershatter, Didier Eribon, Frank Proschan, Ella Shohat, Robert Stam, Pam La Zarr, Nguyen Nguyet Cam, Pham Thi Hoai, Lai Nguyen An, Pham Xuan Nguyen, Hoang Cat, Trinh Cam Lan, Hoa Nguyen. Among my colleagues and friends, I wish to thank: Marguerite Nguyen, Gerard Sasges, Stuart Murray, Kathryn Drabinski, Alice Kim, Michelle Dizon, Diana Anders, Annika Thiem, Tan Hoang Nguyen, Martina Nguyen, Khai Thu Nguyen, Alec Holcombe, Nu-Anh Tran, Jason Picard, Ivan Small, Allen Tran, Mitch Aso, Trung Nguyen, Dave Graham-Squire, Vincent Lloyd, iii Ethan Kaplan, Dominika Bednarska, Eileen Vo, Lindsay Long, Pilar Cossio, Eric Huynh, Lawrence Chua, Nathalie Nguyen, Brad Zamft and Zach Liscow. A special thanks goes to Brad for helping me solve the impossible mysteries of formatting a dissertation; to Zach for his kindness and friendship; to Gerard for being a fabulous person to work with in Vietnam; to Martina for teaching me how to cook when we were in Paris; to Eileen for housing me at Cornell and for our good conversations; to Lawrence for dinner and hospitality in Southeast Asia; and to Caroline for her companionship, generosity and countless other acts of kindess. Nicole Nguyen and Shawn Ratcliff made this journey far more enjoyable. I feel immeasurably richer to have them in my life. My intellectual origins began at UC Irvine‘s School of Humanities with the dedicated professors of the Humanities Core course which introduced students to the examined life. I owe a great debt to Professor John H. Smith who taught me Hegel, the German intellectual tradition and its influence on critical theory. I also wish to acknowledge the memory of the late Professor Richard W. Kroll who first awakened my interest in rhetoric and whose infectious passion for language and literature was always enough reason to take his class, even when it was scheduled at the crack of dawn. Finally, Professor Leslie W. Rabine instilled in me an unflagging belief in the powers of critical consciousness and of committed scholarship. All of these teachers have left no small mark on my life, which has never been the same ever since. I am certain there are many others who have supported me along the way and ask for forgiveness in advance if I may have forgotten to acknowledge anyone. Support for my studies and research came, in part, from the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. iv Preface This dissertation argues that the public discourse of Vietnam‘s periods of modernity—the late French colonial era (1930-1940) and that of the post-socialist decades (1986-2005)— produced interlocking notions of what I shall call queer subjects. I use the term ―queer‖ to refer to a constellation of ideas, identifications, sensations and narratives about gender and sexuality that oppose or exceed a normative understanding of heterosexual reproduction. The dissertation posits, however, a diachronic rupture in the dominant meaning of queer between these two periods. Whereas the former exhibited a capacious vision of gender and sexuality, one that pushed the imagined frontiers of the human body, the post-socialist decades marked a retreat to a static notion of mythic tradition that pathologized and purged queer bodies through recourse to a late nineteenth-century European discourse of gender-inversion, the notion of a man ―trapped‖ in a women‘s body or vice versa. By reconstructing this historical rupture, the project hopes to de- familiarize accepted practices, beliefs and commitments and thereby illuminate viable alternative forms of gendered and sexual life in twentieth-century Vietnam. Some of the prevailing scholarship on Vietnamese

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