The Uses of the Fantastic and the Deferment of Closure in American Literature on the Vietnam War

Abstract

and particularly with the end of the Cold War, after numerous military conflicts the U.S. has been involved in during the last twenty years, and after decades that have been spent, individually and collectively, on the difficult work of mourning, the question, polemically speaking, of why we are still in Vietnam is fairly obvious. What is it about the Vietnam War that it seems to be haunting America more than any other localized event in its recent history? Why is there, whenever we talk about the Vietnam War, a tacit assumption that in some way it is still present and always will be? That, unlike other historical events, it refuses to fade into history as something that eventually becomes truly and irreversibly past? Shouldn't we be moving on, getting over it, adapting to new circumstances, and putting the Vietnam War behind us? Shouldn't we be looking to the future rather than the past? Shouldn't we resist the reactionary implications of nostalgia? Yes, of course we should learn from the past - or be doomed to repeat it - but not dwell on it neurotically, obsessively, morosely. The fact that different positions in the present debate on the Vietnam War can be sketched out with so few strokes of the keyboard indicates how familiar we all are with the shape of the discussion. These positions, varied as they might appear otherwise, follow two distinct lines of argument. One is based on a broad definition of trauma, the other on a pragmatism in which the uses of history in political discourse are understood not so much by their effects as by their causes. Respectively, one of these two camps argues that the Vietnam War is not really over because it has caused an as-of-yet unresolved trauma within the American psyche, which makes it impossible to put the event behind us. The other camp, meanwhile, suggests that we remain anchored in the past because pragmatic interests recognize the usefulness of the Vietnam war as a historical point of reference, a context that legitimizes political action right now. One camp acknowledges the existence of genuine trauma, the other recognizes its pragmatic uses. One camp sees us as victims of history, the other as victims of historiography. Cultural pro