Abstract

From the time it was propagated to Vietnam until it was forced to relinquish its leadership position in both politics and philosophy, Confucianism in Vietnam was never orthodox Confucianism. This study employs the theory of invented tradition to examine how Confucianism penetrated the ethnic Vietnamese community at the turn of the first millennium and points out its vital requirement: the construction of a Chinese-style centralized administrative government based on Neo-Confucianism. This requirement unfolded during the Le So Dynasty in the fifteenth century. Moreover, the theory of invented tradition can also be applied to discover the motivation behind Neo-Confucianism's process of manufacturing orthodoxy to speed up the goal of Sinicization. Somehow, the launching of the imperial examination system, meant to fulfill a system of bureaucracy, ended up resolving one of the greatest challenges of medieval times. It is to seek the ruler's uncritical submission to the ruled. This article applies hauntology to analyze two forms of Confucianism discourse in Vietnam. In doing so, this study determined that Confucianism evolved into its own unique system of thought in Vietnam and in the end, was not even recognizable as Confucianism. Throughout Vietnam's turbulent history, Confucianism shifted from a symbol of progress to one of backwardness. This culminated Vietnam's preoccupation with the de-Sinicization during the early twenty-first century.