Vietnamese Objects traces how French colonial goods, foods and materials were absorbed into Vietnamese life so completely that they now read as authentically Vietnamese.
About this book
Cà phê, cà phê phin, atisô, xi nê ma, căng tin, xi-măng, ghế tô nê—in the Vietnamese language, a great many everyday words carry their French origins on the surface. The research project Objets Vietnamiens takes that linguistic residue as its starting point and works outward, analysing the production of objects in Vietnam through cultural anthropology, the epistemology of Vietnamese design and the sociology of objects.
Drawing on reportage, interviews and research across several archival collections, Quang Vinh Nguyen and Émilie Laystary trace the mechanisms by which objects, foods, materials and expertise were absorbed into Vietnamese life. Their reading is decolonial and critical, and its argument is a generous one: that appropriating the techniques of a dominant power is itself an act of creativity and adaptation. The resulting work doubles as an archive of the present, opening onto everyday life in Vietnam then and now.
Key features
- Sixth title in the Visual Archives series, produced in cooperation with ECAL
- Approximately 250 images documenting objects, materials and everyday settings
- Bilingual throughout, in French and English
- Book design by Chi-Long Trieu
- Softcover with flaps
What you'll discover
- How French colonisation left its trace not only in Vietnamese language and food but across a whole material culture of objects
- Why appropriation—rather than resistance or rejection—became the mechanism through which these goods were made Vietnamese
- The methods a design-led research project brings to material culture: reportage, interview and archival work in combination
- What the sociology of objects reveals about the relationship between colonisation, decolonisation and design
About the editors
Quang Vinh Nguyen is a product designer from Lausanne. After graduating from ECAL he taught in Hong Kong while pursuing personal projects, and in 2019 worked with the eastern Swiss textile industry as part of a Textile and Design Alliance residency. He is now a design researcher at ECAL and is closely connected to the design scene in Vietnam.
Émilie Laystary is a social journalist. She writes for Libération and hosts the Bouffons podcast, which examines contemporary life through the lens of food. Her first book, Petit Traité de la bouffe, was published in 2022. She teaches writing at the University Paris Nanterre and a seminar on social questions at Sciences Po Lille.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions: 160 x 240 mm
- Pages: 248
- Language: French and English
- ISBN: 9783038630906
- Publisher: Triest Verlag
- Publication date: not stated by the publisher
Perfect for
Designers and design historians working on material culture and postcolonial questions, researchers in Southeast Asian studies, and readers drawn to the ways ordinary objects carry political histories.