Remembering, and Forgetting, the Vietnam War

Abstract

A generation ago, cultural studies of foreign relations were as rare as tattoos on professional athletes. Not only have they proliferated of late, but cultural approaches to international history are fast becoming as common as, well, tattoo-adorned bodies in the National Basketball Association. Traditionalists have decried the cultural turn in diplomatic history as a wrong turn. Some have professed a severe allergic reaction to the profligate infusion of terms such as “discourse,”“discursive,”“constructed,” and “representations” into books and articles about international affairs, characterizing that vocabulary as little more than trendy gibberish. Others have complained that the newfound scholarly interest in the international dimensions of gender, race, religion, sports, tourism, film, world fairs, music, popular culture, and societal memory—everything, it seems, except foreign policy and state-to-state relations—represents a triumph of the trivial over what should be the core subject matter of our field. That culturalists frequently ask different questions and utilize different sources than those who remain centrally concerned with the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy ofttimes creates the impression of ships passing in the night.