Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam
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About the talk
Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers pursued alternative uses of the library that exceeded imperial intentions. Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam examines the Hanoi and Saigon state libraries in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam, uncovering the emergence of a colonial public comprising bureaucrats, library personnel, journalists, and everyday readers who reimagined the political meaning and social space of the library through public critique and everyday practice. Moving beyond procolonial or anticolonial nationalism framings, Bibliotactics advances a relational theory of power that centers public reading culture within the library infrastructure of the colonial information order. As the first comprehensive history of the colonial and national library in Asia, this book contributes new insights into publicity, colonial and postcolonial studies, and the histories of Vietnam, libraries, and information.
About the speaker
Cindy Anh Nguyen is an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles with appointments in information studies, digital humanities program, and Asian languages and culture. Her transdisciplinary research examines the historical and socio-technical production of knowledge in Southeast Asia through feminist and critical approaches. She is the founder of Culture Futures Rest Lab which explores cultural and computational questions of interpretation and context by centering global south codesign and multivocal knowledge making. She received her Ph.D. in history at University of California, Berkeley and her multidimensional research has been recognized by the Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, American Libraries Association, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and amp; Publishing, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
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