Law and Literature in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam By Trinh M. Luu A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Karl A. Britto, Co-chair Professor Peter Zinoman, Co-chair Professor Colleen Lye Professor Miryam Sas Spring 2019 Abstract Law and Literature in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam By Trinh M. Luu Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professors Karl A. Britto and Peter Zinoman, Co-chairs This dissertation studies what socialist law and literature owe to each other, and how both can shore up or strain the party-state. It focuses on the 1970s–1990s, when the Socialist Republic of Vietnam set up a complex legal system to ease its transition to a market economy. This period also saw the appearance of a body of literary works, known as Đổi Mới [Renovation] fiction. In four chapters, this dissertation uncovers just how the government built up socialist law, testing Soviet and Chinese legal principles, adapting them by fits and starts to strengthen its own legal order. Each chapter examines the ways Vietnamese writers created characters who must confront the force of law. These characters represent the socialist legal subject long overlooked by the scholarship on Asian postsocialism, and the interdisciplinary field of law and literature. 1 for my mother and father i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Paradise of the Blind: State Socialism and the Legal Subject 11 Chapter 2 The Sorrow of War: Socialist Economic Crime and Spectral Realism 46 Chapter 3 The Crystal Messenger: Socialist Sexual Morality and Unfaithful Aesthetics 76 Chapter 4 Vietism: Carl Jung and the New Vietnamese 100 Archival Sources and Bibliography 139 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of my advisors. I would like to thank Karl Britto for having faith in me and for seeing me through this journey. I could not ask for a more patient and encouraging advisor. From the start, Peter Zinoman has been my critical guide. It is a privilege to be his student, and to learn from him the meaning of work and life. I will always be grateful to Miryam Sas for grounding me intellectually, and for helping bring clarity to this project. Above all, I thank her for always cheering me on. I could never fully capture the influence Colleen Lye has had on me. Her dedication, wisdom, and rigor inspire me, and I can only hope to always have her guidance. At Berkeley, I had great teachers. Trần Hoài Bắc and Trần Hạnh brought me closer to Vietnamese prose. I am grateful to Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm for being a source of learning and great counsel. I thank her for her generosity. I also owe an enormous debt to Steven Lee for his advice and encouragement. A number of institutions made it possible for me to complete this dissertation. I received funding for language study from the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, the University of California Graduate Division, the Institute of East Asian Studies, and the Department of Comparative Literature. The Boren Fellowship and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship allowed me to spend two years conducting research in Vietnam and France. I am grateful to the John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship in International and Comparative Studies, which funded the early stages of my research. The University of California Dissertation-Year Fellowship and a grant from the University of California Humanities Research Institute provided time to write. I am grateful to have had the opportunities to present portions of this dissertation. I would like to thank Hue Tam Ho-Tai, Haydon Leslie Cherry, and Claire Edington for inviting me to the State in Vietnam Workshop, held at Harvard University. Kerstin Schiele brought me to the University of Bonn for a conference on contemporary Vietnam. I thank her and everyone involved for their valuable comments. George Dutton, Mariam Lam, Sarah Maxim, Nancy Lee Peluso, David Szanton, and others at the UCLA Graduate Writing Workshop all helped me refine my arguments. I was fortunate to meet Quang Phu Van, who introduced me to his circle of friends at Yale University. There, Erik Harms gave me an opportunity to test my ideas for a chapter at the Council for Southeast Asian Studies. I feel so privileged to have their support. I am indebted to friends and colleagues who read and commented on draft chapters. At Berkeley, Christopher Fan, Paul Nadal, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Cheng Chai Chang, Jee Huyn Choi, Johaina Crisostomo, Jane Hu, and Lawrence Yang provided many useful suggestions. Mukul Kumar carefully read a chapter, and I am grateful for his candor and wit. Sunny Xiang, one of the best readers of this dissertation, is always been there to help me however she can. I am in her debt. In France, I would like to thank Nguyễn Văn Trần for giving me access to his personal archive. His wisdom and dedication resonated in what he wrote, and I am so fortunate to have come across the journals he helped found. Dr. Nguyễn Hoài Vân and his wife, Béatrice, kindly invited me into their beautiful home. Without Joëlle Ghirlanda, it surely would have taken me much iii longer to find footing in Paris. I thank the archivists at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, especially Cô Sơn, who helped me find my way through the collections. My friend Hà Thục Chi made my stint in Vietnam more meaningful. I am grateful to Ngọc Hạnh Hà for giving me a place to stay. Nguyễn Cẩm Tú at the Center for International Studies at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Nguyễn Văn Huệ, Dean of the Faculty in Vietnamese Studies, sponsored my research. I thank them and the staff at the General Sciences Library, Social Sciences Library, and National Library of Vietnam for their help. From near and far, Bao Kham Chau, Chenxing Han, Joshua Herr, Kimloan Hill, Alec Holcombe, Đỗ Văn Hỷ, Na-Rae Kim, Mandy Li, James Lin, Jason Picard, Brett Reilly, Shannon Reilly, Ivan Small, Simon Toner, Nu-Anh Tran, Quan T. Tran, Calvin Vu, Trent Walker, Alec Worsnop, and Catherine Z. Worsnop all encouraged me along the way. I thank them for their friendship. Samuel Plapinger, his sense of humor never in short supply, made research and writing enjoyable. Yanhong Shi, Minfang Li, and Liang Li—my extended family—has given me many places to call home. They have always been there, at every turn, to help bring out my best. My sister, Linh Luu, may never know how much her generosity and thoughtfulness have guided me. I am grateful to her and my brother-in-law, Nguyen Minh Hoang, for their every kindness. Dinh Luu, Hang Pham, Phap Luu, and Breannda Luu are shining examples of the human spirit. I thank them for their support. Kevin Li is my greatest fortune. The world is better when he is near. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, who will always be my guiding light. iv Introduction This dissertation studies law and literature together, examining the relation between them under state socialism. In modern Vietnam, these two domains, always held in tension but never quite touching, intersected for the first time in 1986. That year, to revive a failing economy, the party-state launched a set of reforms known as Đổi Mới [Renovation]. To kickstart the program, a series of new codes were issued—in criminal law, civil law, foreign investment law, and press law, among others—bookended by two new constitutions, written in 1980 and 1992. This period also saw the appearance of a body of literary works, some later given a place in the national canon. At a moment when law and literature developed in tandem, writers broke boundaries to bring legal insights to their readers, creating, in the process, characters who must confront the force of socialist law. This dissertation examines what socialist law and literature owe to each other, and how both can shore up or strain the party-state. For Vietnam, Renovation is a short but momentous chapter in her long history. The era may have had its start before 1986. In the period leading up to it, the country seemed at times on the brink of collapse. A sense of foreboding already pervaded it in 1978, less than three years after the “guerilla republic” pushed south to unseat the Sài Gòn government.1 By then, galloping inflation, famine, plus “thievery and waste” big and small had exposed the shortcomings of collectivism.2 Subsidy—a system of rationing and price control set up during the war, when foreign reserves poured into North Vietnam—could now hardly cover basic needs. Aid had slowed to a trickle.3 With war on the frontiers against China and Cambodia, the Vietnamese everyman had good reason to believe that his people had no more to give. All manner of rumors circulated, forecasting how the socialist state may have been “folding in upon itself.”4 And yet, the party-state not only stood firm, but grew steadily in the 1980s, becoming absolute, as Alexander Woodside would say, by being “more subtle.”5 Not about to cede all power to market economics, the regime turned its territory into something of a “laboratory” to “redesign Vietnamese behavior.”6 This would come to mean a great many things. Economically, the people—their enterprising spirit blunted by long campaigns rolled out in the 1970s to teach the socialist way of life—now needed to break out of idleness and take daring steps.