The Western Intellectual Debates Behind Kim Định’s Ideas
In reading the writings of South Vietnamese philosopher Kim Định, one point that I have found fascinating is seeing the degree to which Kim Định’s ideas were shaped by his…
Why the Field of Vietnamese History Needs a Joseph Levenson
I’ve said many times that the most important moment in Vietnamese history, in my opinion, is the early twentieth century, because it is the time when the Vietnamese world view…
Archaeology, the Mã Lai Origins of the Việt, Orientalism, Complicity in Colonial Scholarship, Confucianism as the Foundation of Việt Culture. . . All in Two Pages of a Kim Định Book
One of the things that makes reading the works of South Vietnamese philosopher Kim Định so interesting is that they are filled with ideas. Kim Định of course had his…
Visions of Modernity in French Indochina
I recently discovered that the French Archives nationales de outré-mer has digitized a treasure trove of historical photographs from France’s former colonial possessions and has made those images available online…
The Exchange of Women (trao đổi đàn bà) in Obscure History (huyền sử)
In his book, The Philosophy of the Communal House (Triết Lý Cái Đình), Kim Định has a chapter entitled “The Three Strata of Communication” (Ba Giai Tầng Thông Giao) in…
Kim Định’s Diachronic Synchronic Approach to Studying the Past
As I stated in an earlier post, structural anthropologists like Claude Lévi-Strauss sought to employ a “synchronic” (hàng dọc) approach to the study of human societies. The synchronic approach required…
Global Scholarship and the Four Other Pillars of History in Vietnam
I’ve been thinking about several topics that I’ve written about before on this blog: the promotion of Vietnam’s integration into the global world of scholarship; the absence of engagement with…
Kim Định, Zhuangzi and Lévi-Strauss
In his 1973 work, Việt Nho Structure (Cơ Cấu Việt Nho), Kim Định introducted the theory of structuralism to his readers. Relying heavily on information in Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Structural Anthropology,…
Vietam’s Greatest (unknown/unrecognized) Historian
I’m spending the summer reading the writings of Kim Định, a Catholic priest, philosopher and historian who wrote extensively in the 1960s and early 1970s in South Vietnam. In reading…
Summer is Here
It's time to contemplate the meaning of life. . . or maybe just to get some work done rather than make videos all the time. . . Le Minh Khai's…
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