Abstract
This essay contributes to the postcolonial ecocriticism by examining political allegories in three Vietnamese short stories:“Kiến và người” (The Ants and the Man, 1990), “Mối và người” (The Termite and the Man, 1992), and “Nhện và người” (The Spider and the Man, 2012) by Trần Duy Phiên. This essay reads these stories as literary embodiments of the historical and theoretical need for a postcolonial perspective in ecocriticism. It analyzes the complex relations of humans and nature in the context of national modernization so as to show that postcolonial ecocriticism provides a necessary framework for understanding environmental narratives from Vietnam. Specifically, this essay argues that Vietnamese environmental stories reflect and inflect the political and economic conditions of present-day Vietnam: they consider how modernization and nation-building result in the collapse of nature, the human body, and political ideology. In other words, environmental narratives from Vietnam articulate national allegories, whose analysis calls for a postcolonial approach.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Maxwell has foregrounded the need for postcolonial criticism to engage with the realities of growing greenhouse gases and the highly aggressive phase of global capitalism (2009: 14). This dynamic condition relates to what Heise describes as an “eco-cosmopolitan awareness” (2008: 90) and Buell calls “ecoglobalist affects” (2007: 227).
- 2.
As Huggan and Tiffin suggested at the time, the terms “postcolonial ecocriticism” and ““green postcolonialism”“ were used interchangeably (2010: 23).
- 3.
This retyped manuscript was shared with me by Dr. Nguyễn Thị Tịnh Thy (Huế University) through an email exchange on 8 December 2016.
- 4.
References
75 Years of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1930–2005): A Selection of Documents from Nine Party Congresses. Thế giới Publishers, 2005.
Buell, Lawrence. 1996. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. 2007. “Ecoglobalist Affects: The Emergence of U.S. Environmental Imagination on a Planetary Scale.” Shades of the Planet : American Literature as World Literature. Ed. Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 227–248.
———. 2009. The Future of Environmental Criticism Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. New York: Wiley.
Bùi, Thanh Truyền. 2018. Diễn trình sinh thái trong văn xuôi Nam Bộ. Tạp chí Sông Hương 345.4 http://tapchisonghuong.com.vn/tap-chi/c391/n26676/Dien-trinh-sinh-thai-trong-van-xuoi-Nam-bo.html
Chính phủ 1981. 254-CP. Issued on16.6.1982. Accessed Sept 23, 2021. Retrieved from https://thuvienphapluat.vn/van-ban/Xay-dung-Do-thi/Quyet-dinh-254-CP-bo-sung-chinh-sach-khuyen-khich-khai-hoang-phuc-hoa-43093.aspx
Culas, Christian. 2019. “Nature and Humans in Sino-Vietnamese conceptions and practices. Articulations between Asian vernacular ‘analogism’ and Western modern ‘naturalism’ ontologies.” Ecologies in Southeast Asian Literatures: Histories, Myths, and Societies. Edited by Chi P. Pham, Chitra Sankaran, and Gurpreet Kaur. Wilmington: Vernon Press: 111–129.
Cohen, Michael P. 2004. “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique.” Environmental History 9.1: 9–36.
Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam. 1991. Văn kiện Đại hội đại biểu toàn quốc lần thứ VII. Hà Nội: Nxb Sự thật.
Đảng cộng sản Việt Nam. 1993. Văn kiện hội nghị lần thứ tư Ban chấp hành Trung ương, khóa VII. Hà Nội: Lưu hành nội bộ.
Đặng Thị Thái Hà. 2018. “Mờ hồ sinh thái và sự chất vấn những ảo tưởng du lịch sinh thái trong văn xuôi đương đại—Trường hợp Nguyễn Ngọc Tư.” Viện Văn học. Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội: 724–744.
Đoàn Thị Thu Vân. 2017. Thơ ca Nguyễn Trãi từ góc nhìn phê bình sinh thái. Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội: 332–346.
Đỗ Phấn. 2009. Kiến đi đằng kiến (tập truyện ngắn). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Phụ nữ.
Estok, Simon C. 2014. “Afterword: Reckoning with Irreversibilities in Biotic and Political Ecologies.” ARIEL 44. 4: 219–232.
———. 2016. “Partial Views: An Introduction to East Asian Ecocriticisms.” East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader. Ed. Simon C. Estok and Won-Chung Kim. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–15.
Evans, Grant. 1992. “Internal Colonialism in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 7.2: 274–304.
Fforde, Adam. 2007. Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon’s Tooth or Curate’s Egg? San Diego: Elsevier.
Frédéric, Thomas. 1998. “Écologie et gestion forestière dans l’Indochine française.” Outre-Mers: Revue d’histoire 319: 59–86.
Heise, Ursula K. 2008. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2010. “Afterword: Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the Question of Literature.” Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives. Ed. Bonnie Roos and Alex Hunt. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 251–258.
Hickey, Gerald Cannon. 1982. Free in the Forest: Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, 1954–1976. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hồ Sơn. 2020. “PGS.TS Bùi Thanh Truyền: Nhà văn là một sinh thể của môi trường.” Sài Gòn giải phóng 19 April : https://www.sggp.org.vn/pgsts-bui-thanh-truyen-nha-van-la-mot-sinh-the-cua-moi-truong-658010.html Accessed 4 Nov 2021
Huggan, Graham. 2004. “‘Greening’ Postcolonialism: Ecocritical Perspectives.” Modern Fiction Studies 50.3: 701–733.
———. 2009. “Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the Limits of Green Romanticism.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.1: 3–14.
––– and Helen Tiffin. 2007. “Green Postcolonialism.” Interventions 9.1: 1–11.
———. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Routledge.
Gifford, Terry. “Recent Critiques of Ecocriticism.” New Formations, no. 64, 2008, pp. 14–24.
———. 2012. “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral as Reading Strategies.” Critical Insights: Nature and the Environment. Ed. Scott Slovic. Pasadena: Salem Press. 42–61.
Glotfelty, Cheryll. 1996. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. xv–xxxvii.
Kerridge, Richard. 2006. “Environmentalism and Ecocriticism.” Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Patricia Waugh. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 530–543.
Marr, David. 1981. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2013. Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885–1925. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Maxwell, Anne. 2009. “Postcolonial Criticism, Ecocriticism and Climate Change: A Tale of Melbourne under Water in 2035.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.1: 15–26.
McElwee, Pamela D. 2008. “Becoming Socialist or Becoming Kinh? Government Policies for Ethnic Minorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Ed. Christopher R. Duncan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 182–213.
———. 2016. Forests Are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Nguyễn Huy Bỉnh. 2017. Biểu tượng lúa trong thần thoại và nghi lễ các dân tộc thiểu số Việt Nam (Tiếp cận từ góc độ sinh thái học nhân văn). Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội: 256–270.
Nguyễn, Thị Tịnh Thy. 2015. “Tư tưởng sinh thái trong truyện ngắn của Trân Duy Phiên.” Sông Hương 317 (July): http://tapchisonghuong.com.vn/tap-chi/c333/n20401/Tu-tuong-sinhthai-trong-truyen-ngan-cua-Tran-Duy-Phien.html
———. 2017. Rừng khô, suối cạn, biển độc… và văn chương. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội.
Nguyễn Thùy Trang. 2016. “Cảm quan sinh thái trong tiểu thuyết Trăm năm còn lại của Trần Duy Phiên.” Tạp chí Khoa học Đại học Huê 11.125: http://jos.hueuni.edu.vn/index.php/TCKHDHH/article/view/2574
———. 2017. “Sự lật đổ quan niệm ‘nhân loại trung tâm’ trong tiểu thuyết Việt Nam đương đại.” Tạp chí Khoa học, Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn 14. 4b: 72–80.
Nguyen, Tuan Ngoc. 2004. Socialist Realism in Vietnamese Literature: An Analysis of the Relationship between Literature and Politics. Victoria University of Technology: Ph.D. Dissertation.
Nixon, Rob. 2005. “Environmentalism and Postcolonialism.” Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Ed. Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty. Durham: Duke University Press, 233–51.
Pelley, Patricia. 2002. Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past. Durham: Duke University Press.
Peycam, Philippe M. F. 2012. The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916–1930. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pham, Chi P. 2021. Literature and Nation-building in Vietnam: The Invisibilization of the Indians. Routledge.
––– and Chitra Sankaran. Revenge of Gaia: Contemporary Vietnamese Ecofiction. Singapore: Penguin Random House, 2021.
–––, Chitra Sankaran and Gurpreet Kaur. 2019. Ecologies in Southeast Asian Literatures: Histories, Myths and Societies. Wilmington: Vernon Press.
Phillips, Dana. 1999. “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology.” New Literary History 30.3: 577–602.
Raffin, Anne. 2008. “Postcolonial Vietnam: Hybrid Modernity.” Postcolonial Studies Culture Politics Economy 11(3): 329–344
Ryan, John Charles. 2018. “An Introduction to Southeast Asian Ecocriticism.” Southeast Asian Ecocriticism: Theories, Practices, Prospects. Ed. John Charles Ryan. Lanham: Lexington Books. 1–36.
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. 1966. “On the Inscrutability of History.” Encounter 27.
Schoenberger, Laura, and Sarah Turner. 2008. “Negotiating Remote Borderland Access: Small-Scale Trade on the Vietnam–China Border.” Development and Change 39.4: 667–696.
Slovic, Scott. 2009. Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Tạp chí cộng sản điện tử. 2009. “Chinh phục thiên nhiên, phục vụ phát triển kinh tế xã hội.” Tạp chí cộng sản điện tử 28.8 https://www.tapchicongsan.org.vn/web/guest/hoat-ong-cua-lanh-ao-ang-nha-nuoc/-/2018/9408/chinh-phuc-thien-nhien%2C-phuc-vu-phat-trien-kinh-te%2D%2D-xa-hoi.aspx. Accessed November 1, 2021.
Thornber, Karen. 2012. Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
———. 2014. “Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures: Uncertain Presents and Futures.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment. Ed. Louise Westling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 198–211.
Tiffin, Helen and Graham Huggan. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Trần Duy Phiên. 1996. “Kiến và người.” Đất Quảng: Tạp chí sáng tác nghiên cứu phê bình văn học nghệ thuật 65: 13–23.
———. 1992. “Mối và người.” Cửa Việt 3 (May).
———. 2012 “Nhện và người.” Sông Hương 284 (October).
———. 2013. “Ý Thức và tôi.” Quán văn, tập san nghệ thuật 012 (February). Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Thanh niên.
Trần Hữu Lộc. 2018. “Trần Duy Phiên—Trăm năm còn một chút này.” Văn học Việt. https://sites.google.com/site/vanhocviet2013/phe-binh-van-chuong/chuyen-de-nha-van/-chn-dung-nh-vn/-trn-hu-lc-trn-duy-phin%2D%2D-trm-nm-cn-mt-cht-ny
Trần Mạnh Tiến. 2017. “Mối quan hệ giữa con người với môi trường sinh thái trong văn xuôi Việt Nam giai đoạn 1930–1945.” Viện Văn học. Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội: 437–449.
Tran, Ngoc Hieu, and Dang Thai Ha. 2018. “Listening to Nature, Rethinking the Past: A Reading of the Representations of Forests and Rivers in Post-war Vietnamese Narratives.” Southeast Asian Ecocriticism: Theories, Practices, Prospects. Ed. John Charles Ryan. Lanham: Lexington Books. 205–228.
Trần Thị Thanh Nhị. 2018. “Dự báo qua thực vật, động vật trong văn xuôi tự sự trung đại Việt Nam từ góc nhìn phê bình sinh thái.” Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Ed. Viện Văn học. Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội: 394–412.
Viện Văn học. 2017. Ecocriticism: Local and Global Voices. Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội.
Vietnamese Courier. 1984. Volume 20–21. Hanoi: Xunhasaba.
Young, Robert J.C. 2012. “The Postcolonial Condition.” The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History. Ed. Dan Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 600–612.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pham, C.P. (2024). Political Dimensions in Vietnamese Ecofiction. In: Heise, U.K., Pham, C.P. (eds) Environment and Narrative in Vietnam . Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41184-7_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41184-7_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-41183-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-41184-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)