Kevin D. Pham, "The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2024)

New Books in Southeast Asian Studies

In The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford UP, 2024), Kevin D. Pham introduces Vietnamese political thought to debates in political theory, showing how Vietnamese thinkers challenge Western conventional wisdom. He traces an intergenerational debate among six influential figures in colonial Vietnam. These figures had competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination, what the Vietnamese should do with their traditions given the influx of political and social ideas from the West, and how they should harness feelings of national shame to construct national dignity. Their answers offer surprising lessons for how we in the West can enhance our understanding of decolonization, shame, dignity, and cross-cultural engagement.

Kevin D. Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He explores the history of political thought, particularly how thinkers outside "the West" have conceptualized democracy and anticolonialism, and how they challenge and enhance the field of political theory. He has special interests in Vietnam. His articles have been published in journals such as Theory & Event, Philosophy and Global Affairs, European Journal of Political Theory, The Review of Politics, Polity, New Political Science, The European Legacy, and Montaigne Studies. He is the author of The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2024). He co-hosts a podcast about Vietnamese intellectual history called Nam Phong Dialogues. Kevin can be reached at [e-mail]. His website is here: www.kevindoanpham.com.

Camellia (Linh) Pham is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Harvard. Her research explores modern Vietnamese literature, literary translation across French, Vietnamese, English, and Chinese, and the literary history of French Indochina. She can be reached at [e-mail].

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