Freire and Vietnam: A Pedagogy of Warfare

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Paulo Freire Roundtable 2

Abstract

In this paper, I attempt to understand the dialectical relationship between racialization and imperialism for the Vietnamese subject—as it pertains to the question of genocide. The racialization of the Vietnamese subject cannot be divorced from an understanding of the racialization of Asian bodies in the US sociological and geo-political imagination. As a way to substantiate the ways in which the Vietnamese subject has been racialized in Vietnam (and in the US diaspora), I connect this genealogy to the racialization of black people in the US. Using Freirian humanism, dialectical materialism, and postcolonial theory as analytical and pedagogical tools, I make a systematic attempt to engage genocide—by bringing the voices, narratives, and perspectives of the oppressed to the table.

Author

• Kevin D. Lam, Drake University