The unimagined community

<i>The unimagined community</i> proposes a reexamination of the Vietnam War from a perspective that has been largely excluded from historical accounts of the conflict that of the South Vietnamese. Challenging the conventional view that the war was a struggle between the Vietnamese people and US imperialism the study presents a wide-ranging investigation of South Vietnamese culture from political philosophy and psychological warfare to popular culture and film. Beginning with a genealogy of the concept of a Vietnamese culture as the latter emerged during the colonial period the book concludes with a reflection on the rise of popular culture during the American intervention. Reexamining the war from the South Vietnamese perspective <i>The unimagined community</i> pursues the provocative thesis that the conflict in this early stage was not an anti-communist crusade but a struggle between two competing versions of anticolonial communism.