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This reflection on colonial culture argues for an examination of “Indochina” as a fictive and mythic construct, a phantasmatic legacy of French colonialism in Southeast Asia. Panivong Norindr uses postcolonial theory to demonstrate how French imperialism manifests itself not only through physical domination of geographic entities, but also through the colonization of the imaginary. In this careful reading of architecture, film, and literature, Norindr lays bare the processes of fantasy, desire, and nostalgia constituent of French territorial aggression against Indochina.
Analyzing the first Exposition Coloniale Internationale, held in Paris in 1931, Norindr shows how the exhibition’s display of architecture gave a vision to the colonies that justified France’s cultural prejudices, while stimulating the desire for further expansionism. He critiques the Surrealist counter-exposition mounted to oppose the imperialist aims of the Exposition Coloniale, and the Surrealist incorporation and appropriation of native artifacts in avant-garde works. According to Norindr, all serious attempts at interrogating French colonial involvement in Southeast Asia are threatened by discourse, images, representations, and myths that perpetuate the luminous aura of Indochina as a place of erotic fantasies and exotic adventures. Exploring the resilience of French nostalgia for Indochina in books and movies, the author examines work by Malraux, Duras, and Claudel, and the films Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu.
Certain to impact across a range of disciplines, Phantasmatic Indochina will be of interest to those engaged in the study of the culture and history of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos, as well as specialists in the fields of French modernism, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and comparative literature.
Sommario
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Indochina as FIction 1
1. Representing Indochina: The French Colonial Phantasmatic and the Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris 14
2. Unruly Natives: The Indochinese Problem 34
3. The "Surrealist" Counter-Exposition: La Vérité sur les Colonies 52
4. Indochina as "Rêves-Diurnes" and Male Fantasies: Re-Mapping André Malraux's
La Voie royale 72
5. Geographic Romance: "Errances" and Memories in Marguerite Duras's Colonial Cities 107
6. Filmic Memorials and Colonial Blues: Indochina in Contemporary French CInema 13
Conclusion: Retracing the Legacy of "Indochina Adventures" 155
Notes 159
Works Cited 181
Index 199
Info autore
Panivong Norindr is Associate Professor of French and Italian studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Riassunto
Analyzing the first Exposition Coloniale Internationale, held in Paris in 1931, this title shows how the exhibition's display of architecture gave a vision to the colonies that justified France's cultural prejudices, while stimulating the desire for further expansionism.
