"The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization traces an intergenerational debate among six major political figures in Vietnam who had competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination (1858-1954). These thinkers engaged in cross-cultural political thinking, drawing on Indian, Japanese, Chinese, French, German thinkers, and more, conducting what political theorists would today call an engaged form of "Comparative Political Theory." Despite their differences, they sought ...
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"The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization traces an intergenerational debate among six major political figures in Vietnam who had competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination (1858-1954). These thinkers engaged in cross-cultural political thinking, drawing on Indian, Japanese, Chinese, French, German thinkers, and more, conducting what political theorists would today call an engaged form of "Comparative Political Theory." Despite their differences, they sought to channel feelings of national shame and inadequacy for constructive, dignifying ends. In contrast to theorists who tend to view shame as a destructive form of false consciousness, these thinkers show how shame can be an emotional engine to generate power for anticolonialism and self-determination. And while dignity is typically understood in the West as something inherent in individuals, as a justification for rights, and as requiring recognition, these Vietnamese thinkers saw dignity as a property of nations, as rooted in the duties a nation's people embrace, and as something to be asserted by the nation instead of being dependent on recognition by colonizers"--
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