Making Ordinary People Actors in National History

Abstract

This paper analyzes a recent exhibit in Vietnam’s national ethnology museum which depicted ordinary people’s everyday experiences during the postwar, pre-reform era in Hanoi, an era which was full of hardship and had rarely been  discussed publicly prior to this. The exhibit narrated a critical yet nostalgic representation which favored the experiences of ‘ordinary citizens’’ above official discourses about this period. I argue that the exhibit designers aimed to pose ordinary citizens as significant actors in national history, thereby narrating Vietnam’s modern history in a new way. In the course of critically examiningthe past and the present, the exhibit pushed the boundaries of social criticism and public discourse, and showed that museum exhibits are not neutral spacesfor the production of knowledge but, rather, can become sites which mediate indirect negotiation between people and the state and re-interpret the past forthe present and the future.   Keywords: museums, politics of memory, personal narratives, subsidy system, Vietnam