Articles, Chapters by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Nguyen Vu, Thục Linh, and Catherine Davies, eds. "Introduction." In special issue, "Racism and Antiracism," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 50, no. 3 (2024): 217–239
The article engages with two key concepts—"cultural racism" and "intersectionality"—and argues th... more The article engages with two key concepts—"cultural racism" and "intersectionality"—and argues that they offer productive heuristic tools for analyzing the history of racism and antiracism in postwar Europe. It then provides a concise historical overview of racist ideologies and practices, as well as antiracist movements in Switzerland, (West) Germany, and Poland, with brief references to France and Britain, alongside a survey of recent historiography. The conclusion considers whether Critical Whiteness Studies and Afropessimism might open promising directions for future research.
Geschichte und Gesellschaft 50, no. 3 (2024): 240-265, 2024
Thu ˙c Linh Nguyê ˜n Vu ˜* "The Children Will Be Unhappy:" Racialized Perceptions of Cultural Dif... more Thu ˙c Linh Nguyê ˜n Vu ˜* "The Children Will Be Unhappy:" Racialized Perceptions of Cultural Differences in Late Socialist Poland This article draws on a sociological report published in 1987 and authored by two Angolan students at the University of Warsaw to explore the process through which categories of belonging were produced and reproduced in late socialist Poland. It shows that even in a society that was steeped in the anti-imperial and antiracist discourse of socialist solidarity with postcolonial states, informal and everyday microperformances of prejudice and racialization remained salient. By analyzing this and other reports, the article highlights the first-hand experience of international students who had to navigate a reality shaped by racialized categorizations.
The figure of the dissident has become one of the key symbols of political opposition to Communis... more The figure of the dissident has become one of the key symbols of political opposition to Communism in Poland, with former dissidents playing a significant role in shaping the post-socialist and liberal order. While highly visible political struggles in polarized Poland have been foregrounded in confronting the Communist and dissident past, the seemingly less spectacular and more modest attempts at rethinking and reinterpreting the figure of the dissident that has emerged in contemporary Polish theater have gone almost unnoticed. This article examines how two contemporary theatrical plays engage with the polarized political discourse in Poland by problematizing the complex and gendered experience of dissidence. The artistic and political significance of the plays is elucidated against the backdrop of conservative and right-wing tendencies in the contemporary public sphere and artistic world that redefine the broader context within which Polish cultural producers operate. Zooming in on how these performances generate new representations and meanings of the anti-Communist political opposition, the article shows how the plays offer an occasion for rethinking and reinterpreting the figure of the dissident and its troubled legacy. As they explore the fields of tension that open up between individual political commitment and the relational and collective experience of dissidence, the plays make visible how the figure of the dissident has become a tool in remaking a Communist and post-socialist past and shaping a polarized present.
Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century, Marcus Colla and Paul Betts, eds. (Palgrave McMillan, 2024), 2024
In the 1950s the Polish People’s Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam established dipl... more In the 1950s the Polish People’s Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam established diplomatic and political connections that remained constant even after the regime change of 1989. These newly established contacts generated scientific collaborations and a large-scale fellowship programme for Vietnamese students to study in Poland. Drawing on archival findings, pedagogical writings, and oral history, this chapter highlights the tremendous consequences of Poland’s involvement in the postcolonial reshuffling in former Indochina on Vietnamese students who ended up building their lives in late socialist Poland. It seeks to illuminate the process by which Vietnamese students in the late 1970s moved onto the global or transnational terrain of socialist education and, by extension, into the world of transnational socialism, shaping its actual reality on the ground as well as its political, cultural, and affective afterlives in ways that still reverberate today. Their stories implicitly raise questions about the contours and limits of existing forms and spaces of socialist solidarity that did not necessarily welcome wayward grassroots relationships between Vietnamese and Polish students in the form of mixed-race couples. Connecting multiple scales, this chapter excavates these often-forgotten interconnected histories, on the level of both state institutions and individuals, showing that while these relationships were, at times, overtly political they were also intimate. By including the stories and positionalities of those who are often marked as ‘outsiders’ to Polish history, this chapter indirectly offers a reassessment of who counts as a subject of the history of everyday life under socialism through an engagement with the perspectives of Vietnamese students.
Cahiers du Monde Russe, 2021
There isn't one but many Jacek Kurońs. Kuroń meant different things to various people. He was a c... more There isn't one but many Jacek Kurońs. Kuroń meant different things to various people. He was a co-author of the Open Letter to the Party in 1964/65, a co-organizer of the student protests of March 1968, a founding member of The Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), one of the main advisors of Solidarity and, after 1989, a minister of Labor and Social Policy. He was also an original intellectual, a savvy political strategist, and a political prisoner. Although Kuroń's personality was multifaceted and certainly not without complications, it is not surprising that he is nowadays primarily remembered as a political figure. For decades, however, his identity as a pedagogue loomed large both in his self-understanding and in how he was perceived by others. In this article I examine how Kuroń, precisely as a committed pedagogue, a caring friend, and a charismatic personality, shaped the circle of political activists that formed around him and his wife Grażyna (or Gaja) by providing "a moral compass," a shared and safe social space in their Warsaw apartment, and a sense of belonging to a tightlyknit community. This specific type of sociality-and the shared habitus it gave rise towas at work in this political community throughout the 1970s and can be traced back to the common experience of socialist scouting and Kuroń's influence as a pedagogue from the mid-1950s. Tracing continuities of habitus, practices, and friendships that cut across different political periods in late socialist Poland interrogates a prevalent preoccupation with political activists that casts them as either intellectuals or striking workers. 1
Papers by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu
OO CLOSE TO HOME How Minority Communities Broaden the Scope of Care and Help, 2022
As much as war is about armed military con!ict, it is also fundamentally about mass displacement,... more As much as war is about armed military con!ict, it is also fundamentally about mass displacement, broken lives, and lost futures. This simple truth has become way too obvious in large parts of Poland, where providing food, clothes and shelter to strangers, and collecting donations to help refugees from neighboring Ukraine have become common practices among "ordinary" people. With over three million (as of March 16) Ukrainians !eeing war, Poland became a hub for more than half of them, often as a "rst stop en route to their families and friends across Europe. Much of the e#orts of this grassroots mass mobilization to help those escaping their war-torn country falls on the shoulders of various parts of society, including individual activists and non-activists as well as civil society organizations. Volunteers hook up on social media and with the help of other informal channels, weaving a complex web of support including private apartments, informal transportation, and food distribution. In Poland, going to protests, chanting anti-Putin slogans, watching the images of intensifying attacks on Ukrainian towns and of women with children escaping war in horror go hand in hand with collective acts of solidarity and kindness. Within a couple of days, virtually all my close friends in Warsaw were hosting refugees, preparing dozens of sandwiches for new arrivals, o#ering them a warm embrace, and so on. Both the intensity and scale of the Russian invasion of Ukraine make this experience strange, terrifying, overwhelming, and too close to home.
Kwestionariusz: kultura wizualna rasy
Do kuratorek i kuratorów, krytyczek i krytyków, artystek i artystów, teoretyczek i teoretyków wys... more Do kuratorek i kuratorów, krytyczek i krytyków, artystek i artystów, teoretyczek i teoretyków wysłaliśmy zaproszenie do rozmowy o skomplikowanych relacjach między obrazami, wyobrażeniami i "rasą". Poniżej publikujemy ich odpowiedzi. Dziękujemy za Wasze głosy.
Book Reviews by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu
European History Quarterly April 2016 46: 367-370,
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Articles, Chapters by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu
Papers by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu
Book Reviews by Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu