Between Public and Power: A Colonial History of the National Library of Cambodia
Center for Khmer Studies, February 10, 2023
Abstract
What is the history of the National Library of Cambodia? What cultural and political roles did this institution have during the French colonial period and in postcolonial Cambodia? This talk shares archival research findings on the National Library of Cambodia during the French colonial period. Dr. Nguyen unearths the social life of the library and the significance of the colonial library institution as a symbol and technology of textual authority. Dr. Nguyen analyzes how the colonial library architecture, organization, and operations contributed to defining an abstract Western notion of ‘public’ and ‘textual authority’ that perpetuated colonial hierarchies of privileged knowledge access. This project contributes new findings to understanding Cambodian histories of print culture, colonial society, and urbanism. As a scholar of libraries and Southeast Asia, Dr. Nguyen provides a theoretical and methodological framework called ‘bibliotactics’ to critically examine institutions of knowledge in colonial contexts.
The Politics of ‘Good Reading’: Libraries and the Public in Late Colonial Vietnam
Yale University, April 7, 2021
This talk examines the role of state-sponsored libraries within the landscape of print culture and reading public in late colonial Vietnam. I consider how library administrators and government officials defined ‘good reading’ as didactic, politically safe, and vulgarizing reading matter. Through the specific project of the Cochinchina Library bibliobus or xe sách [book wagon],* I reveal how colonial print control and book distribution drew inspiration from the Dutch East Indies Balai Pustaka and American libraries and publishing initiatives. This talk contributes two major interventions in the history of libraries and colonialism in Vietnam. Firstly, it situates the library within the landscape of print culture and peripheries of colonial control, and secondly it points to the administrative exchanges between imperial projects and international library sciences. This talk is part of my book manuscript Misreading: Social Life of Libraries and Colonial Control in Vietnam, 1865-1958. I examine the mechanics, discourse, and everyday practice of the library to fulfill its role as an official governmental institution, resource of public education, and cultural space for the practice of collective responsibility, urban civility, and public reading. I embed libraries within the multilayered landscape of print control—the politics of production, dissemination, and preservation of print matter. I follow the dynamic debates on print control among French colonial and post-colonial government administrators, librarians, archivists, translators, publishers, and readers. These diverse actors investigated the content, language, and influence of ‘good reading’ and initiated projects to disseminate reading matter through translation, publishing, and libraries.
