The Anxious State: Impossibility of Closure and State’s Ontological (In-)security in Postcolonial and Postrevolutionary Vietnam

Abstract

This article develops an account of ontological security of the state as constituted by endless pursuits of discursive totality. Grounded in discussions on state’s ontology, Lacanian and postcolonial insights, the article advances an account of state’s ontological security as predicated upon a totalising but perpetually contingent discourse that reifies itself through ideational order and foreclosure of alternatives. Discursive totality obtains for the state its ontological security by layering social reality to bury its original lack and fixing signifiers in particular, exclusive ways, which must be continually maintained due to the discourse’ very contingency. The case of Vietnam’s ‘syncretic socialism’ and its continual rearticulations in response to different political ruptures embody this ‘anxious state’ always on the move to (re)enclose social terrain within its discourse. The maintenance of discursive totality rests upon syncretic socialism’s capacity to extend itself by rearranging or incorporating signifiers and keep contingency at bay by foreclosing alternatives.