Beautiful Debilitation: War Injuries as Political Currency in Vietnam and US Relations
Main Article Content
Keywords
disability, Vietnam War, atrocity photography
Abstract
War-produced disability acts as political currency between the US and Vietnam. The US engages with “The Terror of War” and Phan Thi Kim Phuc through the lens of beautiful debility. Vietnam salvages beautiful debility, borrowing its global power to improve diplomacy and receive post-war aid when reparation is unreachable.
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1940. University of North Carolina Press.
Beattie, K. (1998). The scar that binds: American culture and the Vietnam War. New York University Press.
Berger, J. (1973). Ways of seeing. British Broadcasting.
Cheng, A. A. (2019). Ornamentalism. Oxford University Press.
Cheng, A. A. (2000). Wounded beauty: An exploratory essay on race, feminism, and the aesthetic question. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 19(2), 191–217.
Choi, K. (2001). Impaired body as colonial trope: Kang Kyŏng’ae’s ‘Underground Village.’ Public Culture, 13(3), 431-458.
Chong, D. (2000). The girl in the picture: The story of Kim Phuc and the photograph that changed the course of the Vietnam War. Viking.
Coburn, J. (1989, August 20). The girl in the photograph: 17 years later. The Los Angeles Times Magazine.
Davidson, M. (2008). Concerto for the left hand: Disability and the defamiliar body.
University of Michigan Press.
Duong, N. (2018). Agent orange bodies: Việt, Ðức, and transnational narratives of repair. Canadian Review of American Studies, 48(3), 387–414.
Douzinas C. (2000). The end of human rights: Critical legal thought at the turn of the century. Hart Publishing.
Erevelles, N. (2011). The color of violence: Reflecting on gender, race, and disability in Wartime. In K. Q. Hall (Ed.), Feminist disability studies (pp. 117–135. Indiana University Press.
Espiritu, Y. (2006). The “we-win-even-when-we-lose” syndrome: U.S. press coverage of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the “fall of Saigon.” American Quarterly, 58(2), 329–52.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2009). Starring: How we look. Oxford University Press.
Gearman, A. (1997, April 20). Cruelty of war finds peace in forgiveness. Los Angeles Times.
Hariman, R. and Lucaites, J. L. (2003). Public identity and collective memory in U.S. iconic
photography: The image of ‘Accidental Napalm.’ Critical Studies in Mass
Communication, 20(1), 35–66.
Kim, E. (2011). ‘Heaven for disabled people’: Nationalism and international human rights
imagery. Disability & Society, 26(1), 93-106.
Livingston, J. (2006). Insights from an African history of disability. Radical History Review,
94, 111-126.
Meekosha, H. (2011). Decolonising disability: Thinking and acting globally. Disability and
Society, 26(6), 667–82.
Moyn S. (2010). The last utopia: Human rights in history. Harvard University Press.
Nguyen, M. (2012). The gift of freedom: War, debt, and other refugee passages. Duke University Press.
Nguyen,V. (2016). Nothing ever dies: Vietnam and the memory of war. Harvard University Press.
Nguyen, X.T. (2023). Decolonial disability studies. In M. Mills and R. Sanchez (Eds.), Crip authorship disability as method, pp. 108-120. New York Press.
Obama, B. (2016, May 24). Remarks by President Obama in address to the people of Vietnam. The White House Office of the Press Secretary. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/24/remarks-president-obama-address-people-vietnam
Ono, D. (2022 June 10). 'Napalm Girl' photographer, survivor reflect on 50th anniversary of
iconic Vietnam War photo. ABC7 Eyewitness News.
Phan, K. (2022, June 6). It’s been 50 years. I am not ‘Napalm Girl’ anymore. The New York
Times.
Phan, K. (2017). Fire Road. Tyndale Momentum.
Puar, J. (2017). The Right to Maim. Duke University Press.
Phu, T. (2012). Picturing model citizens: Civility in Asian American visual culture. Temple
University Press.
Phu, T. (2017). Vietnamese photography and the look of revolution. In S. Sliwinski and S.
Smith (Eds.), Photography and the optical unconscious (pp. 286-320). Duke University Press.
Phu, T. (2022). Warring visions: Photography and Vietnam. Duke University Press.
Sherry, M. (2008). (Post)colonizing disability. Wagadu 4: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies, 21–36.
Smith, S. M., & Sliwinski, S. (Eds.). (2017). Photography and the optical unconscious. Duke University Press.
Shirley, O. (Ed.). (1983). A Cry for Health. Third World Group for Disabled People.
Snounu, Y., Smith P., and Bishop, J. (2019). Disability, the politics of maiming, and higher education in Palestine. Disability Studies Quarterly, 39(2).
Sontag, S. (2004). Regarding the pain of others. Picador.
Sturken, M. (1997). Tangled memories: The Vietnam war, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of remembering. University of California Press.
The Year in Pictures. (1972, December 29). Life. 54.
Troeung, Y. (2023). Refugee race-ability: Bodies, lands, worlds. In E. Gandhi and V. Nguyen (Eds.), Handbook of refugee narratives (pp. 278-290). Routledge.
Weinraub, B. (1981, December 28). Hanoi, in economic straits, seeks to move toward ties with U.S. The New York Times.
Westwell, G. (2011). Accidental napalm attack and hegemonic visions of America's war in
Vietnam. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(5), 407-423.
Wood, A. (2009). Lynching and spectacle: Witnessing racial violence in America, 1890-
1940. University of North Carolina Press.
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Published
Aug 9, 2024
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Research Articles and Essays
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Author Biography
Ai Binh Ho, Independent Scholar
Ai Binh T. Ho is an independent scholar. She is currently working on her manuscript, "Disabled Nation: Guerilla Aesthetics at the War Remnants Museum," which focuses on disability representations and experiences in Vietnam.