The Politics of Space: Vietnam as a Communist Heterotopia in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

Asl, Moussa Pourya

doi:10.17576/3l-2020-2601-11

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This means that the principal method of data collection will be a textual analysis of the selected works. The advantage of this approach is that it bases the interpretations on evidence from the text (Asl, 2019, Ying et al, 2021, leaving the context aside as a secondary matter of importance (Asl, 2018(Asl, , 2020. Hence, the reading will be limited to identifying and analysing examples of behaviour patterns of major characters to make sense of the underlying motives in ways that lead for likely interpretations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grotesque, Shadow and Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Selected Short Stories by Tunku Halim and Edgar Allan Poe

Asl¹,

Ramli²

2021

JSSH

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In examining Malaysian literature in light of the global canon, one cannot miss the numerous parallelisms between literary works by Tunku Halim bin Tunku Abdullah and Edgar Allan Poe. Both writers are preoccupied with grotesque realities of mentally deranged individuals, and similarly visualize the darkness and animality of human consciousness. This article aims at conducting a comparative analysis of the dynamics of personality and of the psyche of fictional characters in selected short stories by the two writers. To this end, the study draws upon Jung’s notions of the Shadow and the Individuation to explore the key psychological motives behind the characters’ behaviour patterns, as well as to examine their level of subjectivity and agency in harnessing the same motives. Notwithstanding the seemingly different ways of presenting the narrative patterns of the characters’ journey towards Individuation, the selected stories are marked with similar examples of characters’ failures in the process of self-realization. While some characters remain trapped in the obscure and perplexing world of the Shadow, others achieve a minimal level of maturity as they begin to realize their own being. In the case of Halim’s stories, however, the characters are additionally held back by cultural and structural forces that constantly affect their realities. It is concluded that this particular difference accounts for Halim’s uniquely hybrid style of writing that merges Western horror genre with more local folklore.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grotesque, Shadow and Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Selected Short Stories by Tunku Halim and Edgar Allan Poe

Asl¹,

Ramli²

2021

JSSH

Self Cite

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“…The victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election rejuvenated a longstanding white nationalist discourse that has invigorated racial and ethnic resentment in the multicultural social fabric of the United States. Trump's divisive rhetoric both in the course of the presidential campaign and after his rise to power has increasingly exposed the non-white migrant communities to racially xenophobic gazes and tendencies (Abramowitz & McCoy, 2019;Asl, 2018Asl, & 2019Asl, & 2020Rushin & Edwards, 2018). Notwithstanding the historical association of Asian Americans 1 with model minority-i.e., law-abiding and productive immigrants-the "American-ness" of these people have also been subject to the suspecting gaze of American white nationalism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Objectifying Gaze: A Lacanian Reading of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

Hadi

Asl

2021

gema

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With the recent prevalence of white supremacist discourses in the United States, Asian Americans have unavoidably been subjected to xenophobic gazes and tendencies. The white gaze has traditionally enjoyed the privilege to objectify and fix the diasporic subject both racially and ethnically, foregrounding a relationality that naturalizes the immigrant as the inferior subject. The Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen recounts similar unsettling experiences and sufferings of the Vietnamese (refugees) in his debut short story collection The Refugees (2017). This essay seeks to explore the narratives to outline the patterns of looking dynamics and stratified and interracial gaze operating among the characters. To this end, Lacanian theories of the gaze, the jouissance drive and the mirror stage are employed to examine the subtle nuances and complex mechanisms of looking relations that are instrumental in the development of Vietnamese characters. It is easily noticeable that the growing consciousness among the characters of their prescribed inferior position in the scopic order engenders in them feelings of anxiety and/or conflicting sexual impulses, or the jouissance drive. Nonetheless, the hierarchal gaze is not depicted throughout the collection as an essentialized and fixed phenomenon. Rather, some of the Vietnamese characters succeed to control, recodify and reassert the prevailing structural domination of the looking relations, and hence reclaim their agency and subjectivity in relation to the Other. It is concluded that Nguyen successfully upends the dominant discourses of representations in which the Americans' centrality is eternalized while the Vietnamese' is prescribed and nihilated.

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“…Previous studies have investigated the issue of power relations through various perspectives. One of the effects of power can be seen in spatial politics as depicted in Viet Thanh Nguyen's "The Refugees", as elaborated in a study by Asl (2020). The study argues that practices based on desired knowledge can manifest power among the Communist Vietnamese in the framework of a heterotopic space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power Relations on Female Body in Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s Short Story

Ningtyas

2021

Poetika

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This study explored the practice of power relations and the panopticon as a disciplinary mechanism in Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s Istana Tembok Bolong short story. ‘Istana tembok bolong’ in this literary work refers to a place near a train station that is separated from the outside area by a perforated wall, which turns to be a palace for the lower class of society occupying the space. By using Foucauldian analysis, this study examined the case of ‘selling matches’ as the central issue of the story being discussed. This phenomenon that occurred in Yogyakarta in the 1970s became the media of the manifestation of power over street prostitutes. The results showed that power relations operate as a means to control the body, particularly female bodies. This is because female bodies become commodities as a result of capitalism. However, in a certain situation, these street prostitutes can also hold power in a way how their bodies are enjoyed. Besides, social norms outside the palace function as a panopticon that makes the inhabitants have self-awareness as they feel constantly monitored. Penelitian ini mengeksplorasi praktik relasi kuasa dan panoptikon sebagai mekanisme pendisiplinan dalam cerita pendek Istana Tembok Bolong karya Seno Gumira Ajidarma. ‘Istana tembok bolong’ dalam karya sastra ini merujuk pada sebuah tempat di dekat stasiun kereta api yang terpisahkan dari area luarnya oleh dinding yang berlubang, yang dianggap sebagai istana oleh masyarakat kelas bawah yang menempati ruang tersebut. Dengan menggunakan analisis Foucauldian, penelitian ini melihat fenomena ‘jual korek api’, yang merupakan isu utama dari cerita yang dibahas di sini. Fenomena yang terjadi di Yogyakarta pada tahun 1970-an tersebut menjadi media perwujudan kuasa terhadap pekerja seks jalanan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa relasi kuasa beroperasi sebagai alat untuk mengendalikan tubuh, terutama tubuh perempuan. Hal ini karena tubuh perempuan menjadi komoditas sebagai akibat dari kapitalisme. Namun, dalam situasi tertentu, pekerja seks jalanan tersebut juga dapat memegang kekuasaan terkait bagaimana tubuh mereka dinikmati. Selain itu, norma-norma sosial di luar istana berfungsi sebagai panoptikon yang membuat penghuninya memiliki kesadaran diri karena mereka merasa terus-menerus diawasi.

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The Politics of Space: Vietnam as a Communist Heterotopia in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

Grotesque, Shadow and Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Selected Short Stories by Tunku Halim and Edgar Allan Poe

Grotesque, Shadow and Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Selected Short Stories by Tunku Halim and Edgar Allan Poe

The Objectifying Gaze: A Lacanian Reading of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

Power Relations on Female Body in Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s Short Story

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