Archives par mot-clé : ARVN

Agenda / Evénements, Débat / Questions d'histoire, Histoire et sociétés d'Indochine, Récits personnels, Séminaires +

Conférence – Débat : Emmanuel Poisson & François Guillemot présentent l’ouvrage de Cao Xuân Huy : En mars, fusils brisés – 21 janvier 2022

A ne pas manquer, présentation en visioconférence. Inscription sur le site de l’IAO. Un séminaire coordonné par Arnaud Nanta.

Vendredi 21 janvier 2022

de 14h-15h30

Emmanuel Poisson, professeur d’histoire sociale et économique du Vietnam classique et traducteur littéraire, Université de Paris.

François Guillemot, ingénieur de recherche au CNRS, Institut d’Asie Orientale, historien du Vietnam contemporain.

Au mois de mars 1975, un mois avant la chute de Saigon, le jeune lieutenant Cao Xuân Huy est fait prisonnier près de Huê. Dans un texte autobiographique qui fit des remous dans la communauté exilée, il relate la retraite et l’annihilation d’une unité de Marines sud-vietnamiens autour du 17e parallèle. Ce récit apocalyptique d’une armée en déroute, paru en 1986 aux États-Unis, est unique en son genre car les témoignages des « vaincus » restent largement inédits et inconnus du grand public. Pour resituer l’ouvrage, cette traduction française est accompagnée d’une introduction de deux historiens du Vietnam « Une guerre sans fard », d’un texte de l’écrivain Bao Ninh et d’une postface de l’écrivain Dô Khiêm. L’ouvrage est également agrémenté d’une bibliographie sur la guerre du Vietnam.

Lien : https://iao.cnrs.fr/actualite/presentation-de-louvrage-de-cao-xuan-huy-en-mars-fusils-brises/

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Débat / Questions d'histoire, Films de fiction, Histoire et sociétés d'Indochine, Lectures / Readings, Signalements

Lan Cao : Vietnam Wasn’t Just an American War [NYT]

[ndlr] Nouvel article sur la guerre, une perspective du côté vietnamien sous la plume de l’écrivaine Lan Cao.

More than 40 years after its end, the Vietnam War remains, for Americans, essentially an American experience, or more accurately, an American metaphor. The continuing American inability and unwillingness to include the Vietnamese perspective also speaks volumes about how the United States relates to the rest of the world. Americans want to be understood but rarely want to understand others.

Hollywood movies have been particularly powerful in shaping America’s Vietnam War narrative. The story line may change, but the backdrop is the same. Chaos, not just wartime chaos, not just the proverbial “war is hell” chaos, but its Asiatic variant — with the inscrutable and unknowable always lurking and pouncing upon the naïve American protagonist. Predictably, as in “Apocalypse Now,” there were fetid rivers, torrid jungles and impassive brown faces as backdrops to an American soldier’s odyssey through the heart of darkness that is Vietnam.

The overarching theme was Vietnam’s meaninglessness and what it did to Americans and America. There was always the tortured, psychologically unglued Vietnam veteran like the one in “The Deer Hunter.” Metaphor takes over as American prisoners of war were forced to endure Russian roulette, a supposedly popular game played in back alleys by natives who seemingly have little value for life. Whether this game existed was irrelevant. It served to symbolize the brutality of war and the lunacies of this particular war.

Lire la suite : New York Times, 22/03/1967.

Ouvrage de cette auteure :

Image “à la une” : Soldats sud-vietnamiens lors d’un engagement contre les troupes nord-vietnamiennes près de Khê Sanh © 1971 UPI radio by Willie Vicoy

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Actualités Viêt-Nam

Nhạc Sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông (1932-2018)

[ndlr] Décès le 26 février dernier à Saigon du musicien et ancien Colonel de l’ARVN Nguyễn Văn Đông. Sélection d’une série d’articles parus au Viêt-Nam et à l’étranger.

Le colonel Nguyễn Văn Đông en uniforme © DR

 

Nhạc Sĩ vào Quân đội từ Thiếu Sinh Quân- Nguyễn Văn Đông từ trần tại Việt Nam, thọ 87 tuổi, Nguoi Viet, Northwest Vietnamese News, 26/02/2018. Nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông (sinh năm 1932), là một nhạc sĩ gắn liền với quân ngũ từ thiếu thời ở bậc Trung học đệ nhất cấp từ năm 14 tuổi- Từng là một nhạc sĩ quân đội với chức vụ cao quyền thế trong làng văn nghệ Việt Nam và nổi tiếng trước 1975. phục vụ liên tục trong quân đội cho đến 1975 vì thế đã phải chịu nhiều năm tù đầy “cải tạo”…… Một số bút danh khác của ông là Phượng Linh, Phương Hà, Vì Dân và Đông Phương Tử.

Nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông, tác giả ‘Chiều mưa biên giới’ qua đời, Tuoi Tre, 27/02/2018. Ca sĩ Giao Linh, người thân thiết của nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông, cho Tuổi Trẻ Online hay nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông qua đời vào 19h30 ngày 26-2 tại Bệnh viện Chợ Rẫy (TP.HCM), hưởng thọ 86 tuổi.

Quynh Trang, Nhạc sĩ “Chiều mưa biên giới” ra đi trong nhẹ nhàng, Phap Luât, 27/02/2018. Theo lời kể của vợ cố nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông thì những phút cuối đời người nhạc sĩ tài hoa này diễn ra nhẹ nhàng. Gia đình xin miễn chấp điếu, hoa quả trong tang lễ.

Tác giả ca khúc Chiều Mưa Biên Giới qua đời ở Sài Gòn, BBC Vietnamese, 27/02/2018. Tin cho hay tác giả ca khúc Chiều Mưa Biên Giới qua đời tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh vào đêm 26/2, hưởng thọ 85 tuổi.

Trần Tiến Dũng/Người Việt, Viếng tang lễ giản dị của nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông, Người Việt, 28/02/2018. Những ngày sau Tết Mậu Tuất, người dân Sài Gòn nhận tin buồn về sự ra đi của nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông.

Nhật Bình/Người Việt, Người Sài Gòn nghiêng mình tiễn đưa nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông, Người Việt, 02/03/2018. Trưa 2 Tháng Ba, tức 15 Tháng Giêng năm Mậu Tuất, nhiều người dân Sài Gòn đã đến tiễn đưa nhạc sĩ, cựu Đại Tá VNCH Nguyễn Văn Đông về nơi an nghỉ cuối cùng.

Tân phong, R.I.P Colonel!, Viêt Tân, 03/03/2018. Hôm 26.02.2018, một người Sài Gòn, một cựu quân nhân VNCH, một nhạc sĩ tài hoa đã qua đời: Đại tá Nguyễn Văn Đông.

Illustration “à la une” : Di ảnh nhạc sĩ Nguyễn Văn Đông trước xe tang © Người Việt

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Agenda / Evénements, Workshop / Journées d'étude

Panel discussion : The Tet Offensive – Lessons from the Campaign After 50 Years (CSIS)

[ndlr] Annonce du CSIS sur un panel consacré à l’Offensive du Têt.

The Project on Military and Diplomatic History cordially invites you to

The Tet Offensive: Lessons from the Campaign After 50 Years

Continuer la lecture de Panel discussion : The Tet Offensive – Lessons from the Campaign After 50 Years (CSIS) →

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Débat / Questions d'histoire, Histoire et sociétés d'Indochine, Lectures / Readings, Signalements

Carie Uyen Nguyen : Whose War Was It? [Aug. 18, 2017]

[ndlr] Poursuite des publications du New York Times sur la guerre du Viêt-Nam dans la série Vietnam ’67 (Historians, veterans and journalists recall 1967 in Vietnam, a year that changed the war and changed America).

Perhaps no one came out of the Vietnam War with a reputation as tarnished as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Since well before the war ended, ARVN soldiers were made an easy and ready scapegoat for America’s losses, a stereotype that found its way into academia and popular culture. We’re told they were incompetent cowards who often shirked their duties, leaving the hard work to the Americans.

As a Vietnamese student at an American university with an extensive archive of Vietnam-era oral histories, both written and tape-recorded, I’ve had a unique opportunity to dig deeper, to find all the ways that this story is flimsy and unfair. Unique because it’s not about showing that American soldiers were wrong — rather, I’ve come across account after account from American veterans talking about the courage and effectiveness of their allied brothers, the South Vietnamese soldiers.

Of course, I’ve come across many Americans with negative attitudes about ARVN. But a lot of them were rear-area personnel, people who never fought alongside ARVN and, I imagine, drew inaccurate conclusions from secondhand accounts they’d hear on base. Other negative accounts focused more on cultural differences than anything else. More than one talked about ARVN soldiers’ penchant for walking hand in hand as they headed out to battle. An American radio specialist who served in Binh Duong in 1967 could not understand it, even many years later: “That was kind of strange to us. I don’t think it was any more than they were just good friends, and that’s what they did over there, but it just seemed kind of strange.”

Other American veterans found it strange that the families of ARVN soldiers would often follow them to camp. As one G.I. contemplated: “So these troops were largely draftees. They went into the field with their wives and kids along with them in trail. When they set up the night defensive position, it was like the extended family was there. They did not want to go out and fight in many cases. They just wanted to survive and take care of their families.”

But in my research, the Americans’ critical assessments are easily matched, and then some, by sympathetic, positive accounts of ARVN. For example, many veterans actually liked having ARVN families nearby and praised the willingness of some wives to risk their lives to get fresh produce from nearby villages to cook hearty meals for their husbands and American soldiers. Others recognized that having family members nearby could be a solid source of moral support for ARVN soldiers, a reminder of what they were fighting for.

Lire la suite : New York Times

Carie Uyen Nguyen is a doctoral student in military history at Texas Tech University.

Image “à la une” : Marines of E Company, Second Battalion, with soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) during a break from patrolling near Da Nang in 1965. U.S. Marine Corps, via Getty Images

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Agenda / Evénements, Débat / Questions d'histoire, Questions mémorielles, Thèses / PhD

Anthony Heathcote : Remember Forever – Relationships With the Living and the Dead in a Vietnamese Online Memorial Site [2015]

[ndlr] Résumé de la thèse de Anthony Heathcote (University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2015) sur un sujet inédit et passionnant : la mémorialisation en ligne dans le Viêt-Nam contemporain à travers l’étude des interactions des internautes sur un forum dédié aux personnes décédées. Cette recherche ethnographique “se déplace à travers le temps, l’espace et les mondes virtuels pour examiner la relation entre les nouvelles technologies des médias et des pratiques commémoratives qui sont souvent culturellement et politiquement controversées” (Christina Schwenkel, VSG).

This thesis is concerned with online memorialisation in contemporary Vietnam. It argues that the experiences of Vietnamese who participate in the online memorial site Nghĩa Trang Online highlight the continuities as well as tensions which exist between online, offline and other world (the world of the dead) communications. At its starting point, this thesis situates Vietnamese online interactions within the cultural practice of ancestor worship in Vietnam, which is the dominant relationship Vietnamese have with the dead. It demonstrates that online interactions with the dead which may seem new and untraditional are profoundly embedded in ancestor worship, and that the practice of ancestor worship itself is one which has transformed, through political, technological, economic and cultural changes.

These examinations also feed into wider socio-political issues in Vietnam, including the online memorialisation of fetuses after an abortion, and the remembering of revolutionary martyrs (liệt sĩ) killed during the American/Vietnam War in contrast to the forgetting of soldiers in the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam/South Vietnamese Army). This thesis also argues that Nghĩa Trang Online engenders a community where Vietnamese can express their emotions relating to loss, continue a relationship with the deceased through comments and online offerings, and give and receive support with fellow members. Such emotional expression is often disenfranchised in Vietnamese society and so online memorialisation becomes a new vehicle for the enfranchisement of grief.

This thesis is based on twelve months’ fieldwork between 2012-2013 in Vietnam within the major cities of Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Da Nang, through online and offline participant observation in the country’s largest online memorial, Nghĩa Trang Online (Cemetery Online). The site is also known as Nhớ Mãi (Remember Forever). Originating in 2008, the website currently has around 60,000 members who use the memorial to create online tombs for the dead, ‘light’ candles and ‘burn’ incense, create online offerings, and remember and communicate with the living and the dead. A number of members also meet in person and participate in death days, cemetery visits, birthdays, weddings, charity events and other social gatherings.

The Internet is burgeoning with spaces dedicated to remembering the dead through social networking sites, blogs, museums, archives, cemeteries and memorials. While there is an expanding body of research contributing to this field, the interactions between the online, offline and the other world in contemporary Vietnam have not been anthropologically researched. This work aims to fill this gap, focusing on the extraordinarily diverse intersection of remembrance, continuing relationships, community, emotion and online memorialisation in contemporary Vietnam.

Mots clés : Nghĩa Trang Online / Nhomai.vn / Anthropology / Ancestor Worship / Death / Ethnography / Vietnam / Online Memorial / Community / Continuing Bonds / Grief / Emotion / Forgetting / Abortion / Revolutionary Martyrs / ARVN / Reflexivity

Source : VSG et Adelaide Research & Scholarship

Image “à la une” : illustration de la page d’accès du site mémoriel Nho Mai © DR

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