Making Ordinary People Actors in National History

This paper analyzes a recent exhibit in Vietnam’s national ethnology museum which depicted ordinary people’s everyday experiences during the postwar, pre-reform era Hanoi, an was full of hardship and had rarely been discussed publicly prior to this. The narrated critical yet nostalgic representation favored ‘ordinary citizens’’ above official discourses about this period. I argue that designers aimed pose citizens as significant actors history, thereby narrating modern history new way. In course critically examiningthe past present, pushed boundaries social criticism public discourse, showed exhibits are not neutral spacesfor production knowledge but, rather, can become sites mediate indirect negotiation between people state re-interpret forthe present future.
 
 Keywords: museums, politics memory, personal narratives, subsidy system, Vietnam