• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam Volume 22

Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam Volume 22

Paperback

Series: Asia Pacific Modern

General ReferenceGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0520416228
ISBN13: 9780520416222
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Jan 13 2026
Pages: 312
Weight: 0.93
Height: 0.87 Width: 5.98 Depth: 8.82
Language: English
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers pursued alternative uses of the library that exceeded imperial intentions. Bibliotactics examines the Hanoi and Saigon state libraries in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam, uncovering the emergence of a colonial public who reimagined the political meaning and social space of the library through public critique and day-to-day practice. Comprising government bureaucrats, library personnel, journalists, and everyday library readers, this colonial public debated the role of libraries as educational resource, civilizing instrument, and literary heritage. Moving beyond procolonial or anticolonial nationalism framings, Bibliotactics advances a relational theory of power that centers public reading culture contextualized within the library infrastructure of the colonial information order. As the first comprehensive history of the colonial and national library in Asia, this book contributes new insights into publicity, colonial and postcolonial studies, and the histories of Vietnam, libraries, and information.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Nguyen, Cindy Anh

Also in

General Racism & Ethnic Studies