Thomas Engelbert – författare

The book is a festschrift, dedicated to Hans Dieter Kubitscheck, the former head of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin. Ten authors representing different academic disciplines (mainly history and ethnology) as well as four different countries (Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Burma/Myanmar) discuss the relations between ethnic minorities and the nation state in Southeast Asia in colonial and modern times.

Dieser Band analysiert die Wahrnehmung und potenzielle Beeinflussung der literarischen und journalistischen Schriftsteller Südvietnams (1955-1975) durch westliches Denken, vertreten durch Denker wie Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, Hermann Hesse, Edmund Husserl, Stefan Zweig, Graham Greene und Somerset Maugham. Er zeigt die Vielfalt des westlichen Denkens in literarischen Texten und unter den Autoren. Der Fokus liegt auf der Auseinandersetzung mit sozialen, kulturellen, politischen und philosophischen Themen, die für Vietnam und darüber hinaus relevant sind. Diese Herangehensweise ermöglicht eine alternative, inklusive Sicht auf die Bedeutung der Texte, ohne sie ausschließlich als anti-kommunistisch oder "bürgerlich individualistisch" zu interpretieren. Der Band problematisiert die Randposition der südvietnamesischen Literatur in der vietnamesischen und internationalen Literaturlandschaft nach dem 'Fall von Saigon'. Ein Schlüsseltext fürForscher der asiatischen und postkolonialen Literatur sowie der Geisteswissenschaften, die sich mit der Geschichte, Politik, Gesellschaft und Kultur Vietnams befassen.

This edited book examines how South Vietnam’s (formerly the Republic of Vietnam 1955-1975) literary and journalistic writers were perceived and - potentially - influenced by Western thought, led by thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, Hermann Hesse, Edmund Husserl, Stefan Zweig, Graham Greene, and Somerset Maugham. The book reveals the dynamism and diversity of Western thought in individual literary texts, as well as among the authors themselves. The volume considers how writers and their texts engaged with issues that are socially, culturally, politically, and philosophically significant to Vietnam and beyond, past and present. This approach to South Vietnam’s literary and journalistic tradition enables an alternative plural, inclusive view of the significance of these texts, which are shown to be neither exclusively anti-Communist nor “bourgeois individualist” (cá nhân tiểu tư sản), as they have so often been interpreted both in and outside of Vietnam. Such an interpretation problematically retains the marginal position of South Vietnam’s literature in mainstream Vietnamese literature, and in the literatures of the host countries where these Vietnamese authors have migrated, settled, and continued to write following the 'Fall of Saigon'. This volume presents itself as a key text for those studying Asian and postcolonial literatures, as well as scholars in the humanities researching Vietnam – its history, politics, society, and culture.