Week 5 Joanne Agus

For this week's reading, "The Empire of Death and the Plague of Civil Violence" by Hamamoto explained the full story and aftermath of wars, especially focusing on the Vietnam wars (Hamamoto, 2013). Furthermore, the Imperial University by Chatterjee and Maira discusses about how censorships is formed in institutions, like Universities, through the values of American Imperialism (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014).

Hamamoto's articles stood out the most to me because I could see how prevalent it is that governments utilize history classes to "brainwash" and doctrine students to shape their nationality. I personally went to a private high school in Indonesia and have had history teachers from all around the world, which helped me have a broader and less bias view of other countries' history. I've also had the privilege of visiting Vietnam's War Remnant's museum twice and toured around Vietnam with my school friends to learn more about the culture. From there, I've learned the tragedy of the Vietnam war is still being prolonged because of the mutation and disabilities that the Vietnamese people are suffering from, from the different chemicals or "herbicides" (honestly they're poison) that the Americans used during the war. When I first learned about it, I didn't know that other chemicals like Agent Purple and White even existed, nor did a lot of other Americans know before I told them about it. We only mostly knew about Agent Orange, and although that was deemed to have the most effect, forgetting to mention these other chemical weapons softens the image of brutality and inhumanity of the American government during the time of war. I have also occasionally talked to some of my american friends about this particular war, and most of them either denied, or have no idea about the post war effects that the Vietnamese people are going through. This lack of detail in history is what makes us, human beings, less united and more separated by our "nationality".

Q: And so, maybe this is the time that we question how we define our nationality, and learn more about our history before rooting of ideas based on non-holistic pieces of information.

(War Remnant Musuem, n.d.)

References:

Hamamoto, D. Y. (2003). Empire of death and the plague of civil violence. In Boggs, C. (Ed.), Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire (pp. 272-296). New York, New York: Routledge.
Chatterjee, P., & Maira, S. (2014). Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

War Remnant Museum (n.d.). Exhibitions [digital image]. Retrieved 30th of April, 2017 from http://warremnantsmuseum.com/exhibititons