Abstract

Many publications of ecocritical research papers and translations of ecocriticism occur in Vietnam in recent years. This paper examines ecocritical scholarly writing in Vietnam, understanding how it corresponds to—reflects and attends to —contemporary Vietnamese society and politics. Specifically, this paper contextualizes Vietnamese ecocriticism in contemporary social and political concerns—embodied in journalistic and administrative documents—about the modernity-oriented postcolonial nation-building of Vietnam. In revealing critiques of political and social degenerations implied in ecocritical writings in Vietnam, this paper suggests that the emergence of ecocriticism in present-day Vietnam indicates a recent “political turn.” More importantly, such emergence reflects and engages with the continuing Marxist perspective of literature as an instrument for social criticism and cultural revolution in Vietnam. Vietnamese ecocritics bear the mission of prophets of the time, public educators, and soul engineers, writing is an act of engaging with and influencing reality. Writing (literary and scholarly) still forms an idealized ideological instrument in the struggles for national homogeneity and sovereignty and social democracy in present-day Vietnam.