From Victimization to Transnationalism: A Study of Vietnamese Diaspora Intellectuals in North America

The objective of this thesis is to examine the issue of identity construction among Vietnamese intellectuals in North America. How is the way in which they construct their identity connected to their position(s) on the Vietnam War, anti-communist community discourse, and memory/commemoration, especially with respect to the contentious debate about which flag represents Vietnam today? Vietnamese Diaspora Intellectuals (VDI) are an understudied group, and I hope my research will help to fill this gap, at least in part, and also serve as a catalyst for further investigation. In my attempt to address this neglected area of study, I am bringing together two bodies of literature: diaspora studies and literature on identity formation among intellectuals. The intersection between these two areas of scholarship has received relatively little attention in the past, and it deserves further consideration, because intellectuals are so often in a position to serve as carriers and disseminators of new ideas, as well as facilitators in conflict resolution. Using a qualitative approach to my data collection, I conducted life history narrative interviews with 32 respondents in Canada and the U.S, as well as some participant observation research of community events. The majority of my interviewees were academics, but some were also journalists/writers, as well as community activists/representatives. A key element of diaspora research, as Cohen and Watts have argued, involves an examination of the “victim narrative”. My project considers the victim narrative in the context of the Vietnamese experience and evaluates the usefulness of such a narrative in terms of community politics and identity formation. My interviewees were often skeptical about the utility of such a narrative, and in some cases, viewed it as a thinly veiled mechanism of control, which serves the interests of community leaders, but may in fact, hinder the progress of the Vietnamese diaspora population. They contemplated some possibilities for transcending such a narrative, which could involve the creation of “free spaces”, permitting the expression of other points of view. As we will see, my interviewees reflected on the irony inherent in this situation. Many Vietnamese risked their lives in pursuit of the democratic ideal of freedom, but some of my participants discovered that the attempt to impose an overarching narrative – the rejection of communism – in fact led to the very antithesis of that ideal. In this connection, my research complicates Cohen’s work on diaspora, which assumes that all diasporic communities speak with one voice with regard to defining moments in their history. Cohen argues that members of such groups, by definition, shared a common past, an agreed-upon way of commemorating that past, and a common destiny. I argue that Cohen has oversimplified the situation. My research demonstrates that there is no such thing as unanimity. Vietnamese diaspora intellectuals do not simply navigate academic “interaction ritual chains” as Randall Collins has asserted, they must navigate several - often competing interaction rituals - which extend to their roles as members of their ethnic community as well. How do my interviewees deal with the inevitable conflicts and tensions engendered by such competing interaction rituals? Finally, what are the possibilities of moving forward, of generating a new narrative, which will transcend the rigid and restrictive anticommunist discourse dominant in community politics thus far? And what role can Vietnamese diaspora intellectuals play in this regard? My research indicates that they are uniquely qualified to facilitate the process of rapprochement, because the life of intellectuals demands a high degree of reflexivity and thus better enables them to evaluate the merits of conflicting viewpoints. My hope is to inspire future research – not only in the Vietnamese community, but on and for other diasporic groups as well. My work extends Neil Gross’ theory of the “intellectual self-concept” (ISC) (which focuses on American academics) by introducing the notion of the diaspora intellectual self-concept (DISC). Such concept allows us to include analysis of intellectuals with significant transnational connections who are dealing with racial and ethnic tensions in their new homeland while establishing themselves as professionals and citizens in a new cultural and political context.

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