The unimagined community

The unimagined community presents a wide-ranging study of South Vietnamese culture, from political philosophy and psychological warfare to popular culture and film. The book pursues the provocative claim that in its early phase the conflict was not an anti-communist crusade, but a struggle between two different forms of anti-colonial communism.

The unimagined community proposes a reexamination of the Vietnam War from a perspective that has been largely excluded from historical accounts of the conflict, that of the South Vietnamese. Challenging the conventional view that the war was a struggle between the Vietnamese people and US imperialism, the study presents a wide-ranging investigation of South Vietnamese culture, from political philosophy and psychological warfare to popular culture and film. Beginning with a genealogy of the concept of a Vietnamese "culture," as the latter emerged during the colonial period, the book concludes with a reflection on the rise of popular culture during the American intervention.