Proximity and Distance

Vietnamese Memories of the War with the USA

Bibliographic Data

ID2144262
AuthorsHelle Rydstrøm (0000-0003-0864-0873, Lund University, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume17
Issue1
Pages21-39
Publication date2007-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4677 • E-ISSN: 1469-2902
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00664670601168435
OpenAlexW2019582089
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited24

By employing an intergenerational perspective, this article examines the ways in which memories about the war between Vietnam and the USA are engraved in the social and individual body in a northern Vietnamese rural community. Throughout the 1990s, Vietnam and the USA attempted to improve their postwar relationship. The current atmosphere of coming to terms with a past of war through coexistence and reconciliation fosters ambivalences and ambiguities in young postwar generations. On the one hand, they have to reconcile themselves to the pain and bitterness caused by the war. On the other, they have to bridge the gap between themselves and their parents and grandparents concerning the extent to which they are able to ‘forget the past and look toward the future’, as one national postwar strategy recommends. The article thus highlights the complex ways in which war and postwar generations in local Vietnam attempt to remember and/or forget brutality, sorrow and anger, in order to come to terms with what in Vietnam is referred to as the American War

Grandparent · Order (exchange) · Political science · Sociology · Sorrow · Spanish Civil War · Vietnam War · Vietnamese · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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