Tourism and the irony of colonial underdevelopment in Nhất Linh's "Going to the West". Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Nguyen, Duy Lap
• Is Part Of: Studies in travel writing. Volume 22:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 371
• Page End: 388
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Nhất Linh -- French colonialism -- Vietnamese literature -- tourism -- travel writing -- satire; Travelers' writings -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 820.9355
• DOI: 10.1080/13645145.2019.1621037
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1755-7550

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay proposes a reading of Nhất Linh's "Going to the West" ( Đi Tây, 1935). The travelogue presents a critique of colonialism that was prevalent among the interwar Vietnamese elite. In the narrative, the voyage to France provides the pretext for a political comedy, ironising an imperialism that proclaimed equality in the metropole, while perpetuating colonial underdevelopment. This irony is highlighted in a series of contrasts between the condition of Vietnamese servants or "boys" and that of their metropolitan counterparts: waiters in the restaurant industry. In the travelogue, this commodified form of consumption, which colonised everyday life in France, becomes the occasion for a critique of underdevelopment. This critique, however, presupposes the same European ideal of modernity, used to justify the colonial project. The essay concludes with a history of the "boy" as a symbol of colonial oppression, created, ironically, by the attempt to impose the Republican ideal of equality.