Subversive Hybridity and Mimicry in the Visual Representations and Philosophy of Vietnamese Cao Đàism
Subversive Hybridity and Mimicry in the Visual Representations and Philosophy of Vietnamese Cao Đàism

Summary/Abstract: Robert J. C. Young, in his work Postcolonialism, A Historical Introduction, points out that postcolonial studies are often distinguished by unmediated secularism and thus end up excluding the religions that have attempted to provide alternative value-systems to those of the West (338). Janet Hoskins, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California and one of the West’s foremost experts on Cao Đàism, also noticed how religion is overlooked by postcolonial theory (“Posthumous Return” 218). At the same time, Dipesh Chakrabarty in Provincializing Europe also pointed out that postcolonial theory does not value subaltern resistance that operates according to its secular terms (85). Within the context of these observations, we aim to argue that the specific ways the Cao Đài adopted, adapted, and ultimately symbolically subverted the colonial discourse are very relevant to postcolonial theory. It is thus within the scope of the paper to analyze some of their symbols, visual representations, and elements of their philosophy that were adapted into new forms within the processes of cultural hybridization and mimicry coined by Homi Bhabha in his seminal work, The Location of Culture.

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