From Trauma to Legend: Ghost Narratives and Postwar Memory in Mỹ Lai
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0137Keywords:
My Lai Massacre, ghost legends, postwar Vietnam, space, spirit, and ritual framework, vernacular memoryAbstract
This article examines how contemporary ghost legends related to the Mỹ Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968) shape collective memory in postwar Vietnam. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including 38 in-depth interviews conducted from 2021 to 2024, the study suggests that remembrance in Mỹ Lai is organized through two interrelated layers: institutionalized memory and vernacular memory. Based on this finding, the article proposes the Space, Spirit, and Ritual (SSR) framework to elucidate the mechanisms through which memory operates in Mỹ Lai. Although grounded in the Vietnamese case, the framework is presented as a heuristic for comparative analysis of memory-making in other communities affected by collective violence, with careful attention to local context. It also contributes to ongoing scholarly dialogues in folklore studies, memory studies, the anthropology of religion, and global memory politics.
References
Anderson, D. L. (Ed.). (1998). Facing My Lai: Moving beyond the massacre. University Press of Kansas.
Assmann, J. (2011). Cultural memory and early civilization: Writing, remembrance, and political imagi-nation. Cambridge University Press.
Belknap, M. R. (2002). The Vietnam War on trial: The Mỹ Lai Massacre and the court-martial of Lieuten-ant Calley. University Press of Kansas.
Bodnar, J. (1992). Remaking America: Public memory, commemoration, and patriotism in the twentieth century. Princeton University Press.
Breen, J. (2005). Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and memory. The Asia-Pacific Journal, 3(10).
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. (1998). Nghị quyết số 03-NQ/TW về xây dựng và phát triển nền văn hóa Việt Nam tiên tiến, đậm đà bản sắc dân tộc [Resolution No. 03-NQ/TW on building and developing an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity]. https://tulieuvankien.dangcongsan.vn/he-thong-van-ban/van-ban-cua-dang/nghi-quyet-so-03-nqtw-ngay-1671998-cua-ban-chap-hanh-trung-uong-tai-hoi-nghi-trung-uong-5-khoa-viii-ve-xay-dung-va-phat-1692
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. (2003). Nghị quyết số 24-NQ/TW về công tác tôn giáo [Resolution No. 24-NQ/TW on religious affairs]. https://tulieuvankien.dangcongsan.vn/he-thong-van-ban/van-ban-cua-dang/nghi-quyet-so-24-nqtw-ngay-1232003-hoi-nghi-lan-thu-bay-ban-chap-hanh-trung-uong-dang-khoa-ix-ve-cong-tac-ton-giao-1698
Dégh, L. (1994). American folklore and the mass media. Indiana University Press.
Dégh, L. (1996). What is a belief legend? Folklore, 107(1-2), 33-46.
Durkheim, É. (1915). The elementary forms of religious life. George Allen & Unwin.
Ellis, B. (2001). Aliens, ghosts, and cults: Legends we live. University Press of Mississippi.
Endres, K. W. (2008). Engaging the spirits of the dead: Soul-calling rituals and the performative construc-tion of efficacy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(4), 755–773.
Feola, G., Goodman, M. K., Suzunaga, J., & Soler, J. (2023). Collective memories, place-framing and the poli-tics of imaginary futures in sustainability transitions and transformation. Geoforum, 138, 103668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.103668
Fishkin, S. F. (2015). Native American voices remember Wounded Knee. In Writing America: Literary landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (pp. 90–105). Rutgers University Press.
Foster, M. D. (2009). Introduction to the weird. In Pandemonium and parade: Japanese monsters and the culture of Yōkai (pp. 1-34). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520253612.003.0001
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (pp. 109-133). Pantheon Books.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). Interna-tional Publishers.
Guillou, A. Y. (2012). An Alternative Memory of the Khmer Rouge Genocide: The Dead of the Mass Graves and the Land Guardian Spirits (Neak ta). South East Asia Research, 20(2), 207-226.
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Ed. & Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
Hastings, M. (2018). Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. HarperCollins.
Hersh, S. M. (1970). My Lai 4: A report on the massacre and its aftermath. Random House.
Jelin, E. (2003). State repression and the labors of memory (J. Rein & M. Godoy-Anativia, Trans.). Univer-sity of Minnesota Press.
Jones, H. (2017). My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the descent into darkness. Oxford University Press.
Kendall, L. (2009). Shamans, nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean popular religion in motion. Universi-ty of Hawai‘i Press.
Kucera, K. (2008). Remembering the unforgettable: The memorial at Mỹ Lai. Studies on Asia, Series III, 3(1), 69-80.
Kuroda, T. (1996). The development of the kenmitsu system as Japan's medieval orthodoxy. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 23(3/4), 233-269.
Kwon, H. (2006). After the massacre: Commemoration and consolation in Ha My and Mỹ Lai. University of California Press.
Kwon, H. (2008). Ghosts of war in Vietnam. Cambridge University Press.
Ledgerwood, J. (1997). The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes: National narrative. Mu-seum Anthropology, 21(1), 82-98. https://doi.org/10.1525/mua.1997.21.1.82
Logevall, F. (2012). Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. Random House.
Margry, P. J., & Sánchez-Carretero, C. (2007). Memorialising traumatic death. Anthropology Today, 23(3), 1-2.
Mencej, M. (2021). The dead, the war, and ethnic identity: Ghost narratives in post-war Srebrenica. Folk-lore, 132(4), 412-433. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2021.1905380
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7-24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520
Ngân, N. T. K. (2021). Metaphysical experiences in postwar Vietnam. Narrative Culture, 8(2), 297-312. https://doi.org/10.13110/narrcult.8.2.0297
Pollack, S. (2003). Burial at Srebrenica: Linking place and trauma. Social Science & Medicine, 56(1), 193-203.
Phước, H. H. (2023). The symbol of Hùng Kings: From a founding myth to modern national belief. SU-VANNABHUMI, 15(1), 129-154.
Roszko, E. (2012). From spiritual homes to national shrines: Religious traditions and nation-building in Vietnam. East Asia, 29(1), 25-41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-011-9156-x
Schwenkel, C. (2009). The American War in contemporary Vietnam: Transnational remembrance and representation. Indiana University Press.
Toan Ánh. (1992). Nếp cũ: Tín ngưỡng Việt Nam [The old ways: Vietnamese beliefs]. Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House.
Tung, P. H. (2008). 40 năm sau vụ thảm sát Mỹ Lai: Lật lại hồ sơ một tội ác chiến tranh của quân đội Mỹ tại Việt Nam [40 years after the Mỹ Lai Massacre: Re-examining a war crime committed by the U.S. Army in Vietnam]. Nghiên cứu Lịch sử, (383), 20-29. https://scholardocs.dlu.edu.vn/ViewPDFOnline/document.php?loc=0&doc=89397376629572837274657664913763258690
Thiện, Đ. (2007). Unjust-death deification and burnt offering: Towards an integrative view of popular religion in contemporary southern Vietnam. In P. Taylor (Ed.), Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam (pp. 161-193). ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.
Thompson, S. (1955-1958). Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, medieval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local leg-ends (Rev. & enl. ed., 6 vols.). Indiana University Press.
Thủy, T. V. (Director). (1998). The sound of the violin in Mỹ Lai [Film]. Vietnam Film Studio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKq62meVA3k
Thủy, T. V., & Dũng, L. T. (2013). Chuyện nghề của Thủy [Thủy’s professional stories]. Writers’ Associa-tion Publishing House.
Trường, T. C. Đ. (2006). Thần, người và đất Việt [Gods, people, and Vietnamese land]. Văn hóa Thông tin Publishing House.
U.S. Department of the Army. (1970). Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the Mỹ Lai Incident (Vol. II, Testimony, Book 14). Library of Congress. Re-trieved June 21, 2023, from https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/Peers-Inquiry_vol-2.pdf
Verdery, K. (1999). The political lives of dead bodies: Reburial and postsocialist change. Columbia Uni-versity Press.
Winter, J. (1995). Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural history. Cam-bridge University Press.
Winter, J. (2010). The performance of the past: The memory boom and the politics of commemoration. In K. Tilmans, F. van Vree, & J. Winter (Eds.), Performing the past: Memory, history, and identity in modern Europe (pp. 9-28). Amsterdam University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 hoang phuoc
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
For all articles published in ASEAS before December 2014 and after July 2022, copyright is retained by the authors. For articles published between January 2015 and June 2022, the Society for South-East Asian Studies (SEAS) is the copyright holder. Articles published in ASEAS before December 2019 are licensed under the following Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. Articles published after that date are licensed under the following Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International. In both cases, this means that everybody is free to share (to copy, to distribute, and to transmit the work) under the following conditions:
-
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
-
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
-
NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
