A Vietnamese Le Canard Enchaîné ? The Vịt Đực newspaper and the pursuit of Vietnamese satire in the final interwar years (1938-1939)

Bùi Khánh Minh

26 June 2026, 5:30pm - 7pm (Vietnam Time, UTC +7)
Hosted by EFEO at Ho Chi Minh City
113 Hai Bà Trưng, Bến Nghé, D. 1

This presentation introduces Vịt Đực — a Vietnamese language satirical newspaper published from July 1938 to July 1939. The presentation will discuss four aspects of the newspaper. First, it will introduce the formation of the newspaper and the biographies of its founders within the intellectual world of colonial Hanoi in the 1930s. Second, it will discuss the influence of Le Canard Enchaîné on Vịt Đực. Third, it will describe how the newspaper successfully localized the verbal and visual humor that its French counterpart espoused. Fourth, it will analyze selected columns that best demonstrate the newspaper’s contrarian politics, particularly its critique of polarizing partisanship in colonial Vietnam’s domestic politics following the victory of the Popular Front in 1936. As the newspaper was created against the backdrop of failed colonial reform and imperial meltdowns in anticipation of another World War, its commitments to vernacular satire and non-partisanship suggested an alternative vision of a Vietnam beyond the split of monarchism, republicanism, and communism.

Bùi Khánh Minh is a PhD student in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian 20th century histories.