11 - Anticolonialisme et dissidence : Tran Duc Thao etLes Temps modernes

Tran Duc Thao: Politics and truth

“…This outlook is on display already in Thao's first article for Les Temps Modernes , “On Indochina,” which “uses the phenomenological concept of horizon in order to explain the existential divergence” between the French and the Vietnamese (Thao, 1946b; Melançon, , p. 206). The former see the problem of the status of Indochina as a problem of the internal constitution of France while the latter see the same problem as one to be solved only through the creation of an independent Vietnamese state, coequal with and respected by France.…”

“…From these considerations emerges a picture of Thao both as a student, a committed Communist already engaged with the political struggles—concrete and individual as well as intellectual—of the time and, after the war, as a scholar engaged in the philosophical struggles between phenomenology, existentialism, and dialectical materialism (Kleinberg, 2005; Hemery, 2013; Melançon, ). If Thao's particular attitudes during the Second World War remain largely a matter of studied conjecture, complicated by his personal closeness to Cavaillès and Merleau‐Ponty, after the war Thao emerges “as a revolutionary on two fronts: against the imperialism of France in Indochina, and against capitalism in France and in Indochina” (Melançon, , p. 204).…”

“…From these considerations emerges a picture of Thao both as a student, a committed Communist already engaged with the political struggles—concrete and individual as well as intellectual—of the time and, after the war, as a scholar engaged in the philosophical struggles between phenomenology, existentialism, and dialectical materialism (Kleinberg, 2005; Hemery, 2013; Melançon, ). If Thao's particular attitudes during the Second World War remain largely a matter of studied conjecture, complicated by his personal closeness to Cavaillès and Merleau‐Ponty, after the war Thao emerges “as a revolutionary on two fronts: against the imperialism of France in Indochina, and against capitalism in France and in Indochina” (Melançon, , p. 204). If his education gave him an almost unique position to combat colonial imperialism, that same education seems only to have sharpened the younger Thao's antipathy toward capitalism: as Melançon notes, while Merleau‐Ponty read and taught communist texts during the war, seeking to find some way of surpassing the idealism of phenomenology, Thao would pursue a synthesis from the other side, applying his own communist convictions in pursuit of a solution to the shortcomings of phenomenology (Melançon, , p. 205).…”

“…Thao's exposition of this “existential divergence” between the French and the Vietnamese—aptly summed up by Melançon as a “dialogue of the deaf”—is a thread running through all three of the articles that Thao wrote for Les Temps Modernes in 1946 and 1947 . What makes Thao a dissident, rather than a revolutionary, is that he demands the comprehension of a horizon and of a political possibility that are equally closed off [ interdits ], whose expression is illegal, and which are moreover made impossible by the ideology of colonialism (Melançon, , p. 211). It is this dissident position that organizes not only Thao's explicitly political works but also the philosophical work—beginning with his engagement with Husserl and continuing through the publication of his 1951 book, Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism .…”

Introduction

“…On observe en effet un intérêt croissant pour les écrits de Thảo sur la phénoménologie à partir des années 1960 (voir aussi Rovatti 1970 ;Tomassini 1970Tomassini et 1972Brouillet 1975 ;Invitto 1985 ;Nardi 1994 ;Herman 1997 ;Warren 2009 ;Moati 2013 ;Benoist 2013 ;Feron 2013 ;Giovannangeli 2013 ;Melegari 2014 ;Melançon 2016a ;Feron 2017Feron , 2018Feron et 2019. Par ailleurs, un certain nombre de travaux ont porté sur le versant politique de la pensée de Thảo et en particulier, sur la question coloniale (voir Federici 1970 ;McHale 2002 ;Majkut 2003 ;Espagne 2013 ;Melançon 2013 ;Simon-Nahum 2013 ;Melançon 2016b ;Ford 2020). Une série de travaux récents se sont toutefois intéressés à la spécificité de la réflexion philosophique de Thảo, mettant en valeur son apport théorique (Bimbenet 2019 ;Melançon 2019 ;Riscali 2019 ;Feron 2019 ;Haug 2019 ;Stanciu 2019).…”