The article examines the status of free speech in Vietnam in light of some of the explosive debates that have flared up in both the US and Europe. It argues that unlike in the West the Vietnamese case requires a critical defense to augment the space for free speech as such. To lead up to this conclusion, the essay looks at two case studies of literary censorship in Vietnam to demonstrate that, since the middle of the twentieth-century, literary speech has been synonymous with political speech. Given the limited space for political speech itself, the essay concludes by advancing a version of the autonomy defense of free speech as one viable critical resource in the Vietnamese context.
AndersonBenedict. “The Origins of National Consciousness.” Chap. 5 In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 37-46. London: Verso.
2.
BassThomas A.2017. Censorship in Vietnam: Brave New World. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.
3.
BoudarelGeorges.1990. “Intellectual Dissidence in the 1950s: The Nhan Van Giai Pham Affair.” Vietnam Forum13.
4.
BrisonSusan J.1998. “The Autonomy Defense of Free Speech.” Ethics108, no. 2: 312‐39.
5.
BromwichDavid. “A Note on the Life and Thought of John Stuart Mill.” in On Liberty. Rethinking the Western Tradition, 1-27. New Haven: Yale University Press.
6.
ButlerJudith.2021. “Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition.” in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.
7.
ChanJoseph.2014. “Individual Autonomy and Civil Liberties.” Chap. 6 in Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times, 131-59. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
8.
DinhLinh. “Introduction.” in Night Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam, edited by DinhLinh. New York: 7 Stories Press.
9.
ElsteinDavid.2021. “A Confucian Case for Moderate Free Expression.” Conference paper presented for the Reset Dialogues on Civilizations at Ca'Foscari University, Venice, Italy, May 25, 2021.
10.
EsterlineJohn H.1988. “Vietnam in 1987: Steps toward Rejuvenation.” Asian Survey28, no. 1: 86‐94.
11.
FishStanley.1997. “Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking About Hate Speech.” Critical Inquiry23, no. 2: 378‐95.
12.
HabermasJürgen.1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambrige: MIT Press.
13.
JamesonFredric.1971. “Towards a Dialectical Criticism.” Chap. 5 in Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature, 306‐416. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
14.
KantImmanuel.1914[1790]. “Analytic of the Beautiful.” Translated by J.H. Bernhard. in Critique of Judgment. London: The MacMillan Company.
15.
KerkvlietBenedict J.2019. Speaking out in Vietnam: Public Political Criticism in a Communist Party-Ruled Nation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
16.
KrautRichard H.2018. “Plato against Democracy: A Defense.” in Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, edited by BrinkDavid O.MeyerSusan SauvéShieldsChristopher. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17.
LamTruong Buu.1996. “Review: The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam.” The Historian58, no. 2: 424‐25.
18.
LeeHaiyan.2014. The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
19.
LinkPerry.2000. The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
20.
LoewensteinJosephStevensPaul. 2004. “Charting Habermas’ “Literary’” or “Precusor” Public Sphere.” Criticism46: 201‐205.
21.
McHaleShawn.2002. “Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946-1993.” The Journal of Asian Studies61, no. 1: 7‐31.
22.
McKeonMichael.2004. “Parsing Habermas’ “Bourgeois Public Sphere”.” Criticism46, no. 2: 273‐77.
23.
NgAndrew.2014. “Visitations of the Dead: Trauma and Storytelling in Bao Ninh’s the Sorrow of War.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies6, no. 1: 83‐100.
24.
NguyenNgoc Tuan.2004. “Socialist Realism in Vietnamese Literature: An Analysis of the Relationship between Literature and Politics.” Victoria University.
25.
NinhKim.2002. A World Transformed: The Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam, 1945-1965. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
26.
SantasGerasimos.2007. “Plato’s Criticism of Democracy in the Republic.” Social Philosophy & Policy24, no. 2: 70‐89.
27.
SenAmartya.2013. “Press Freedom: What Is It Good For?.” Index on Censorship: A Voice for the Persecuted42: 6‐15.
28.
SidneySir Philip.2002[1595]. An Apology for Poetry, or the Defence of Poesy Geoffrey Shepherd. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
29.
SunsteinCass R.1995. “Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech.” in Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech. New York: The Free Press.
30.
ThaoTran Duc.2012. “Hai Chuyen Di Doi Doi” [Two Trips That Changed One’s Life].” Chap. 10 in Noi Hoi Han Lúc Hoàng Hôn [Repentance at Dusk]213-50. Orsonnens, Switzerland: Hoa rác Publishers.
31.
TruongChinh.2012. “Marxism and Vietnamese Culture (1948).” in Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, edited by DuttonGeorge E.WernerJayne S.WhitmoreJohn K., 522‐30. New York: Columbia University Press.
32.
WellekRenéWarrenAustin. 1949. Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
33.
ZinomanPeter.1992. “Nguyen Huy Thiep's Vang Lua and the Nature of Intellectual Dissent in Contemporary Vietnam.” Vietnam Generation4, no. 1-2: 59‐64.
34.
ZinomanPeter.2016. “Nhân Văn Giai Phám on Trial: The Prosecution of Nguyen Huu Đang and Thuy An.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies11, no. 3-4: 188‐215.
