Die to survive: Cao Dai memories and rituals in late-socialist Vietnam
Author: Shao, Zhushuai
Under the direction of: Erwan Dianteill
Paris Cité University
English text
Keywords: Ethnology, Vietnam, Cao Dai religion, Rite, Caodaism, Syncretism, Religious life, Manners and customs.
Abstract
Officially founded in 1925, the Cao Dai religion was the most potent new religious group during the last century and, for thirty years, the largest mass movement in southern Vietnam. Members of Cao Dai faced suppression and killing because the new religion of Cao Dai had become embroiled in political controversy in the 1940s. Massive deaths during wars lead to competition between citizens and states to gain authority over issues around death. This thesis focuses the discussion on notions of death and spirit, as well as on memorial behavior and ritual engagement. By exploring redemption myths and the ways by which people strive to achieve redemption, the thesis examines how a millennial anti-colonial movement merges with modern society and connects the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras. By going deep into their mythical afterlife universe, notions of the body, funeral, mourning, healing, and various rituals, this ethnography shows how a marginal group escapes forceful statism and builds a bounded social space through death-related engagements. An afterlife dominated by the Cao Dai theology will change the dead’s unequal status in a developing socialist country. Here, the soul of an individual "died to survive" a society where state and capitalism have the authoritative definition of the value of death and life. The competition in authority over defining death requires the support of a large number of activities on the part of living people. Through ritualised space, death-related activities became a reproductive force to ensure the vitality of the Cao Dai community. The Cao Dai religion experienced continuous transformation in a society undergoing political and social changes and maintained its vitality in contemporary Vietnamese society by providing funeral and ritual services.
