Duy Lap Nguyen
Biographic Data
| ID | 507190 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Duy Lap Nguyen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Duy Lap |
| FAMILY NAME | Nguyen |
| SIGNATURE | NGUYEN D L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Houston |
| ORCID | 0009-0001-4239-9174 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Vietnamese Personalism
Colonialism, Surplus Population, and the Marxian Critique of Political Economy
This article examines Karl Marx’s critique of Thomas Malthus’s theory of population and his discussion of colonization in the last chapter of Capital. For Marx, Malthus’s theory naturalizes the process of social reproduction specific to capitalism, a process that was disrupted in the colonies, where, owing to the availability of land, the superfluous population of immigrant workers were transformed into independent producers
Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy
"Exploring the connections between Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history and a Marxian Critique of Political Economy, Duy Lap Nguyen analyses Benjamin's early writings and their development into a distinct understanding of historical materialism. Benjamin's historically materialist conception of history is shown to be characterised by a focus on the religion of capitalism, the mythology of the state, and messianic time. Revealing these factors,…
Arcades
Originating in Paris in the 1820s, arcades were decorative passages or walkways through blocks of buildings. Typically glass‐roofed and supported by ornate ironwork columns, arcades served as a form of interior street: a site of consumption for the wealthy, and a place of marvel and spectacle for the poor. In sociological terms, the importance of the Parisian arcades lies in their purported role as progenitor of modern consumerism and, more tange…
Universal History and Immanent Critique in Anti-Oedipus
This essay considers Deleuze and Guattari’s paradoxical claim that Marx’s critique of political economy implies as a universal history derived from the singular features of capitalism. In this critique, capitalism is defined by the commodity form, as a relationship of economic equivalence that replaces the bonds of dependence underlying other social formations. By negating relations of kinship and caste, capitalism reveals, a contrario, the unive…
O lga D ror . Making Two Vietnams
Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965–1975 is a retelling of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the education of Vietnamese youth in the North as well as the South. As Olga Dror argues, the apparently peripheral issue of pedagogy, defined as an institutional practice though which a state reproduces its power, is in fact crucial to understanding the conflict, which spanned several generations. To continue the war, “both societie…
Tourism and the irony of colonial underdevelopment in Nhất Linh’s “Going to the West”
This essay proposes a reading of Nhất Linh’s “Going to the West” (Đi Tây, 1935). The travelogue presents a critique of colonialism that was prevalent among the interwar Vietnamese elite. In the narrative, the voyage to France provides the pretext for a political comedy, ironising an imperialism that proclaimed equality in the metropole, while perpetuating colonial underdevelopment. This irony is highlighted in a series of contrasts between the co…
Sovereignty, Surveillance, and Spectacle in South Vietnamese Spy Fiction
This essay develops a reading of Bùi Anh Tuấn’s Ian Fleming–inspired Specter over Red Square (Bóng Ma trên Công Trường Đỏ). Published during the war in Vietnam, the novel was one of the most successful examples of the new forms of mass culture that emerged in the context of the US military intervention in South Vietnamese cities. In the novel, the character of the Vietnamese superspy appears as a figure for the ambivalent political situation of t…
Alternate Histories of Korean National Sovereignty in 2009
Against Autonomy
Against Autonomy: Capitalism Beyond Quantification in the Autonomist Reading of Marx Duy Lap Nguyen (bio) This essay outlines a critique of the autonomist theory of post-Fordism as a stage of capitalism defined by immaterial forms of production that purportedly constitute “value beyond quantification,” which is to say, value exceeding the measure of spatialized time. The essay argues that this concept of immaterial labor – proposed as a correctiv…
The Angel of History and the Commodity Fetish
On the suspension of law and the total transformation of labour
This paper argues for the contemporary significance of the 'Critique of Violence' by proposing a Benjaminian reading of two important analyses of the relationship between history, politics and the Rights of Man: Hegel's account of the French Revolution and the concept of dissensus proposed by Jacques Rancière. For both Hegel and Rancière, the gap between right and reality - between the ideal of equality, for example, and the existence of concrete…
The Universal Province of Modernity
This essay proposes a critique of Provincializing Europe. I argue that the project of Provincializing Europe is based upon a contradictory conception of political modernity. Modernity is defined in the text as both the ‘provincial’ product of the particular history of Europe and the universal norm of historical progress. This contradiction, I argue, is a result of the hermeneutic approach that Chakrabarty applies to the project of provincializing…
Imagine No Possessions
Christina Kiaer frames her reinterpretation of Constructivism as an argument against several related accounts of the twentieth-century avant-gardes, the most important of which is Peter Burger's se
Capitalism and Primal History in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project
This essay proposes a reading of Walter Benjamin's attempt to develop a historical materialist critique of phenomenological theories of time, including those of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edmund Husserl. In the Arcades Project, these theories of time-which Benjamin describes as different accounts of "primal history"-are characterized as the historical products of industrial capitalism as a particular mode of production. Drawing on…
Le Capital Amoureux
This paper explores the relationship between revolution and corruption in Jean Genet’s accounts of the Palestinian movement in his final work, Prisoner of Love. For Genet, corruption does not simply expose the actions of a revolutionary subject as an empty impersonation, performed for the actual ends of acquiring personal power and fortune. Rather, it exposes the ‘pretension’ inherent in the revolution it undermines as well as in the accumulation…
The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front
Research Article| May 01 2008 The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front Duy Lap Nguyen Duy Lap Nguyen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2008) 20 (2): 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2007-030 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Duy Lap Nguyen; The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National…
The Angel of History and the Commodity Fetish
The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front
Research Article| May 01 2008 The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front Duy Lap Nguyen Duy Lap Nguyen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2008) 20 (2): 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2007-030 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Duy Lap Nguyen; The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National…
The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front
Research Article| May 01 2008 The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National Liberation Front Duy Lap Nguyen Duy Lap Nguyen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2008) 20 (2): 375–394. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2007-030 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Duy Lap Nguyen; The Kim Tho and the Uses of Disposable Time in the National…
Le Capital Amoureux
This paper explores the relationship between revolution and corruption in Jean Genet’s accounts of the Palestinian movement in his final work, Prisoner of Love. For Genet, corruption does not simply expose the actions of a revolutionary subject as an empty impersonation, performed for the actual ends of acquiring personal power and fortune. Rather, it exposes the ‘pretension’ inherent in the revolution it undermines as well as in the accumulation…
The Universal Province of Modernity
This essay proposes a critique of Provincializing Europe. I argue that the project of Provincializing Europe is based upon a contradictory conception of political modernity. Modernity is defined in the text as both the ‘provincial’ product of the particular history of Europe and the universal norm of historical progress. This contradiction, I argue, is a result of the hermeneutic approach that Chakrabarty applies to the project of provincializing…
Imagine No Possessions
Christina Kiaer frames her reinterpretation of Constructivism as an argument against several related accounts of the twentieth-century avant-gardes, the most important of which is Peter Burger's se
Capitalism and Primal History in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project
This essay proposes a reading of Walter Benjamin's attempt to develop a historical materialist critique of phenomenological theories of time, including those of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edmund Husserl. In the Arcades Project, these theories of time-which Benjamin describes as different accounts of "primal history"-are characterized as the historical products of industrial capitalism as a particular mode of production. Drawing on…
Against Autonomy
Against Autonomy: Capitalism Beyond Quantification in the Autonomist Reading of Marx Duy Lap Nguyen (bio) This essay outlines a critique of the autonomist theory of post-Fordism as a stage of capitalism defined by immaterial forms of production that purportedly constitute “value beyond quantification,” which is to say, value exceeding the measure of spatialized time. The essay argues that this concept of immaterial labor – proposed as a correctiv…
The Angel of History and the Commodity Fetish
On the suspension of law and the total transformation of labour
This paper argues for the contemporary significance of the 'Critique of Violence' by proposing a Benjaminian reading of two important analyses of the relationship between history, politics and the Rights of Man: Hegel's account of the French Revolution and the concept of dissensus proposed by Jacques Rancière. For both Hegel and Rancière, the gap between right and reality - between the ideal of equality, for example, and the existence of concrete…
Alternate Histories of Korean National Sovereignty in 2009
Tourism and the irony of colonial underdevelopment in Nhất Linh’s “Going to the West”
This essay proposes a reading of Nhất Linh’s “Going to the West” (Đi Tây, 1935). The travelogue presents a critique of colonialism that was prevalent among the interwar Vietnamese elite. In the narrative, the voyage to France provides the pretext for a political comedy, ironising an imperialism that proclaimed equality in the metropole, while perpetuating colonial underdevelopment. This irony is highlighted in a series of contrasts between the co…
Sovereignty, Surveillance, and Spectacle in South Vietnamese Spy Fiction
This essay develops a reading of Bùi Anh Tuấn’s Ian Fleming–inspired Specter over Red Square (Bóng Ma trên Công Trường Đỏ). Published during the war in Vietnam, the novel was one of the most successful examples of the new forms of mass culture that emerged in the context of the US military intervention in South Vietnamese cities. In the novel, the character of the Vietnamese superspy appears as a figure for the ambivalent political situation of t…
Universal History and Immanent Critique in Anti-Oedipus
This essay considers Deleuze and Guattari’s paradoxical claim that Marx’s critique of political economy implies as a universal history derived from the singular features of capitalism. In this critique, capitalism is defined by the commodity form, as a relationship of economic equivalence that replaces the bonds of dependence underlying other social formations. By negating relations of kinship and caste, capitalism reveals, a contrario, the unive…
O lga D ror . Making Two Vietnams
Making Two Vietnams: War and Youth Identities, 1965–1975 is a retelling of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the education of Vietnamese youth in the North as well as the South. As Olga Dror argues, the apparently peripheral issue of pedagogy, defined as an institutional practice though which a state reproduces its power, is in fact crucial to understanding the conflict, which spanned several generations. To continue the war, “both societie…
Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy
"Exploring the connections between Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history and a Marxian Critique of Political Economy, Duy Lap Nguyen analyses Benjamin's early writings and their development into a distinct understanding of historical materialism. Benjamin's historically materialist conception of history is shown to be characterised by a focus on the religion of capitalism, the mythology of the state, and messianic time. Revealing these factors,…
Arcades
Originating in Paris in the 1820s, arcades were decorative passages or walkways through blocks of buildings. Typically glass‐roofed and supported by ornate ironwork columns, arcades served as a form of interior street: a site of consumption for the wealthy, and a place of marvel and spectacle for the poor. In sociological terms, the importance of the Parisian arcades lies in their purported role as progenitor of modern consumerism and, more tange…
Vietnamese Personalism
Colonialism, Surplus Population, and the Marxian Critique of Political Economy
This article examines Karl Marx’s critique of Thomas Malthus’s theory of population and his discussion of colonization in the last chapter of Capital. For Marx, Malthus’s theory naturalizes the process of social reproduction specific to capitalism, a process that was disrupted in the colonies, where, owing to the availability of land, the superfluous population of immigrant workers were transformed into independent producers
Law (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Economics (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (6 works)