Abstract

This study weaves Cold War Epistemology, critical multiculturalism, racial capitalism, and critical refugee studies to theorize how the Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity is related to Canadas national identity formation. Adopting a critical ethnography methodology and discourse analysis, this study asks: What are the conditions of community conflicts within the Vietnamese community and how are those conflicts related to the processes of Canadian national identity formation? The production and contestation of Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity in the making of Canadian national identity is traced through three major sites of analysis. This first site is the debate on the Memorial to Victims of Communism as captured in the media. The second site is the parliamentary and community commemoration of the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975 which includes debates on the Journey to Freedom Day Act and local community events. The final site is a Toronto community agency conflict of identity. This study reveals the logic of racial capitalist democracy underlying Canadian national identity as free, humanitarian, democratic, and peace-making. This is constructed through the production of Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity as a particular model minority and model refugee framed within Cold War neoliberal and multicultural discourse with significant consequences to the wellbeing of the community.