Doing Time: Revolution and Temporality in the Hoa Lo Prison

• In Event: Time, Narrative, and Anticolonial Political Thought

Abstract

Vietnamese revolutionaries. From 1964 to the early 1970s, it was repurposed by Vietnamese revolutionaries to imprison American pilots. Then, from the late 1970s to early 1980s, the prevailing Vietnamese revolutionaries used it to imprison Vietnamese dissidents. By the 1990s, the prison closed and reopened as a museum. What did it mean for Vietnamese and American patriots to “do time” in Hoa Lo during different time periods? Vietnamese and American prisoners have discussed their experiences at Hoa Lo in memoirs, but this paper explores this question by turning to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. I examine how the museum narrates to its visitors the prison’s significance in the Vietnamese revolution (throughout the prison’s entire existence), with special attention to how the museum uses references to temporality (e.g., rhythms of seasonal temperatures experienced in the prison, periods of solitary confinement, durations of torture, weekly opportunities to eat meat, changing functions of the prison according to different phases of revolution, etc.). I argue that such references are used to show the continuity and persistence of the Vietnamese revolution amidst and despite the discontinuity and temporariness of experiences and functions of the prison.

Author

• Kevin D Pham, University of Amsterdam