Abstract
Previous studies on classical reception related to the Vietnam War have overlooked the experiences of Vietnamese communities, whether national or diasporic, as they focussed instead on those of American combat veterans. While that scholarship has yielded important insight, it nevertheless has contributed to the disremembering of Vietnamese people that is at the core of the dominant American subjectivity of the Vietnam War, which relegates Vietnamese people to the margins of history as either enemies or victims – or worse, forgotten. To build on this scholarship, this paper closely reads three poems (‘Telemachus,’ ‘Trojan,’ and ‘Odysseus Redux’) in Ocean Vuong’s 2017 poetry collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, through the lenses of memory theory and queer of colour critique. I demonstrate how Vuong queers the Homeric Odyssey by subverting the canonical narrative: Odysseus returns home dead, leaving Telemachus to explore his inheritance of war as a queer refugee. Through this queer mythology, Vuong explores the conflicting layers of his intergenerational trauma, which pit refugeehood and queerness not only against each other, but also against Americanness. Overall, this paper argues that Vuong reworks the Homeric Odyssey in order to create his own ‘postmemories’ of the war that challenge historical erasure by defiantly placing the queer refugee at the centre, rather than the periphery, of an American narrative.
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Notes
V.T. Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Cambridge, 2016, p. 4.
Ibid, p. 5.
Ibid, pp. 106–7. Nguyen defines ‘the industry of memory’ as ‘the material and ideological forces that determine how and why memories are produced and circulated, and who has access to, and control of, the memory industries.’ He differentiates between an industry of memory and memory industry in that the ‘work that memory industries do is only part of an industry of memory.’
See, for example, D. Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War, Cambridge, 2000 and M. Boot, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, New York, 2018, whose very titles include the phrase ‘the American Tragedy’ in reference to the Vietnam war. R.C. Pirro, The Politics of Tragedy and Democratic Citizenship, New York, 2011, pp. 9–10 discusses the debate between Robert McNamara and General Võ Nguyên Giáp regarding the use of the word ‘tragedy’ to refer to the Vietnam War. McNamara frequently employed the terms ‘tragedy’ and ‘tragic’ to describe the war, such as in R. McNamara, with B. Van De Mark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, New York, 1995 and R. McNamara et al., Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy, New York, 1999.
Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies (n. 1 above), 2016, p. 49 defines the Vietnam syndrome as ‘the fear of failure and the moral revulsion to war that have plagued Americans since their defeat in Vietnam.’ Nguyen quotes George H.W. Bush who claimed, ‘By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,’ when Saddam Hussein's forces were defeated.
B. Obama, ‘Presidential Proclamation – Veterans Day.’ The White House Archives. 29 March 2012, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/29/presidential-proclamation-vietnam-veterans-day.
See, for example, L. Tritle, From Melos to My Lai: A Study in Violence, Culture and Social Survival, New York, 2000; J. Tatum, The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance From the Iliad to Vietnam, Chicago, 2003; Meineck, P., ‘These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished,’ Arion, 17, 2009, pp. 173–91, ‘Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: ‘Restoration’ by Cultural Catharsis,’ Intertexts, 16, 2013, pp. 7–24; P. Meineck and D. Konstan, eds., Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks, New York, 2014.
J. Shay, Odysseus in America, New York, 2002, p. 153.
Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies (n. 1 above), 2016, p. 63: ‘Disremembering is not simply the failure to remember. Disremembering is the unethical and paradoxical mode of forgetting at the same time as remembering, or, from the perspective of the other who is disremembered, of being simultaneously seen and not seen.’
I am currently working on a monograph that addresses this issue by examining classical reception by Vietnamese communities, both national and diasporic, from the mid-19th century to contemporary times.
O. Vuong, ‘Ocean Vuong talks about his work,’ YouTube, 4 January 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3LJEmbMtqE.
M. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, New York, 2012.
Ibid, p. 5.
Within Homeric scholarship, the Telemachy refers to the first four books of the Odyssey in which Telemachus goes in search of his father Odysseus who has been missing for ten years after the ten-year Trojan War. Odysseus himself does not appear until Book Five and it is through his son’s journey that the reader/listener is introduced to Odysseus’ wartime legacy. The Telemachy reveals the impact of war beyond the battlefield as it details the stagnant state of affairs at Odysseus’ home in Ithaca: his wife Penelope has been dutifully waiting for him and warding off suitors who have overrun his home, while his son Telemachus has been paralysed by fear and uncertainty, trapped between boyhood and manhood. As Telemachus embarks on his quest for his father, he also goes through a series of rites of passage to reach manhood (e.g. giving orders to his mother, leading a council of men, venturing outside of his home for the first time, learning about guest–host relations), but ultimately only fully achieves it with his father’s help as the two fight off the suitors side-by-side.
J. K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, Durham, NC, 2007.
Ibid.
O. Vuong, ‘Telemachus,’ Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Washington, 2016, lines 1–4.
Homer, Odyssey, I.215–216. All translations from the Greek in this paper are my own.
Homer, Odyssey I.236–240.
Vuong ‘Telemachus’ (n. 17 above), 2016, lines 9–12.
Ibid, lines 12–16.
Ibid, lines 1–4.
Ibid, lines 16–20.
Homer, Odyssey, IV.140–154.
Homer, Odyssey, IV.235–289.
Homer, Odyssey, XXIV.511–512.
Vuong ‘Telemachus’ (n. 17 above), 2016, lines 19–24.
Ibid, lines 18–19.
Ibid, lines 4–5.
Ibid, line 6.
P. Marfleet, ‘Refugees and History: Why We Must Address the Past,’ Refugee Survey Quarterly, 26, 2007, pp. 136–148; L. H. Malkki, ‘Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things,’ Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 1995, pp. 495–523; M. J. Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees, Cambridge, 2004. The Geneva Convention inserted ‘the refugee’ into international law within the context of asylum as guaranteed by national governments. The debates that have emerged since the Geneva Convention have been driven by the availability of resources and international humanitarian obligations. Much of the academic arguments regarding the definition of a refugee has similarly revolved around the role of the nation-state, both the (in)ability of the home state to provide protection and the capacity of international intervention. For example, M.J. Shacknove, ‘Who is a Refugee?’ Ethics, 95, 1985, pp. 274–284 (277) contends that ‘refugees are, in essence, persons whose basic needs are unprotected by their country of origin, who have no remaining recourse other than to seek international restitution of their needs, and who are so situated that international assistance is possible.’ On the other hand, M. Lister, ‘Who Are Refugees?’ Law and Philosophy 32, 2013, pp. 645–671 criticizes the calls for a broader definition and instead supports strict adherence to the 1967 Protocol definition since it highlights a distinct group of refugees to whom international aid is ethically obligated. For a survey on refugee history, see P. Gatrell, ‘Refugees – What’s Wrong with History?’ Journal of Refugee Studies, 30, 2017, pp. 170–189.
For ethical considerations of forced displacement, see S. Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement, New York, 2017. L. Ferracioli, ‘The Appeal and Danger of a New Refugee Convention,’ Social Theory and Practice, 40, 2014, pp. 123–14 argues that states should negotiate a new Refugee Convention because the current one is inadequate in terms of who it counts as a refugee and how it assigns responsibility to states.
Y. Lê Espiritu, Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees, Oakland, 2014, pp. 1–23 discusses how, in the early 1980s, Vietnamese refugees were depicted as the ‘desperate-turned-successful,’ and therefore as the newest ‘model minority.’ The term model minority emerged in the 1960s to refer to Japanese Americans who managed to achieve economic and social success despite the ravages of internment. It was later used in reference to other Asian American groups who, through supposedly ‘innate ability’ and cultural qualities, are able to become successful in American society. Model minorities therefore become exemplary ethnic citizens that are used to marginalize other minorities who are deemed less capable of achieving the ‘American dream.’ For more on the development of the model minority, see K. Osajima, ‘Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s,’ in M. Zhou and J. Gatewood, (Eds.), Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader, New York, 2000, pp. 449–458. Y. Lê Espiritu, ‘Toward a Critical Refugee Study: The Vietnamese Refugee Subject in US Scholarship,’ Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 1, 2006, pp. 410–433 explores what she terms as the ‘we-win-even-when-we-lose’ syndrome, which serves to reposition America as the ultimate victor of the Vietnam War by recasting it as the rescuer of Vietnamese refugees.
See H. M. Stur, ‘Hiding Behind the Humanitarian Label: Refugees, Repatriates, and the Rebuilding of America’s Benevolent Image After the Vietnam War,’ Diplomatic History, 39, 2015, pp. 223–244 for a study on the rhetoric of ‘refugees’ in building the US’ humanitarian image.
V. T. Nguyen, ‘Refugee Memories and Asian American Critique,’ Positions, 20, 2012, pp. 911–942 (930).
See Y. Lê Espiritu, ‘Toward a Critical Refugee Study’ (n. 32 above) and Y. Lê Espiritu, Body Counts (n. 32 above) for studies of the Vietnamese refugee subject in the US.
J. F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants, New York, 1964 is a quintessential example of this ideology. The old mission statement of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (prior to the change in 2018) also touted the US as a ‘nation of immigrants: ‘USCIS secures America's promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system’ (R. Gonzales, ‘America No Longer A 'Nation Of Immigrants,' USCIS Says,’ National Public Radio, 22 February 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/22/588097749/america-no-longer-a-nation-of-immigrants-uscis-says)).
J. Weiner, ‘ “Call Me a Refugee, Not an Immigrant:” Viet Thanh Nguyen,’ The Nation, 11 June 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/call-refugee-not-immigrant-viet-thanh-nguyen.
Cucinnelli added this additional line to the poem by Emma Lazurus during his interview with the National Public Radio in August 2019. Cucinnelli was defending the new ‘public charge’ rule, which denies green cards and visas to legal migrants who use federal, state and/or local government benefits, such as food aid. Cucinnelli continued on to explain that ‘all immigrants who can stand on their own two feet, be self-sufficient, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, again, as in the American tradition, would be welcome’ (S. Ingber and R. Martin, ‘Immigration Chief: “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor Who Can Stand On Their Own 2 Feet, ” ’ National Public Radio, 13 August 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750726795/immigration-chief-give-me-your-tired-your-poor-who-can-stand-on-their-own-2-feet).
Vuong ‘Telemachus’ (n. 14 above), 2016, lines 6–8.
Homer, Odyssey IV.271–4.
Homer, Odyssey II.1–3.
O. Vuong, ‘Trojan,’ Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Washington, 2016, lines 1–4.
Homer, Odyssey II.14.
O. Vuong, ‘Trojan’ (n. 42 above), lines 7–10.
Ibid, lines 10–13.
Ibid, lines 16–17.
Ibid, lines 13–14.
Puar, Terrorist Assemblages (n. 15 above), p. xii.
O. Vuong, ‘Trojan’ (n. 42 above), lines 22–23.
Ibid, lines 25–27.
O. Vuong, ‘Odysseus Redux,’ Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Washington, 2016, lines 1–2.
Ibid, lines 9–10.
Ibid, lines 10–13.
Ibid, lines 13–15.
Ibid, lines 16–19.
Ibid, lines 19–22.
For works discussing homoeroticism in Caravaggio’s works, see D. Posner, ‘Caravaggio's Homo-erotic Early Works,’ Art Quarterly, 34, 1971, pp. 301–324 and J. Champagne, ‘Caravaggio’s Melodramatic Male Bodies,’ in Italian Masculinity as Queer Melodrama: Global Masculinities, ed. J. Champagne, New York, 2015, pp. 55–84.
V. T. Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies (n. 1 above), p. 17.
Ibid, p. 18.
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Nguyen, K. Queering Telemachus: Ocean Vuong, Postmemories and the Vietnam War. Int class trad 29, 430–448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-021-00605-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-021-00605-3