“After generations of blinkered approaches and insular canons, Kevin Pham adds tremendously to the globalization of our perspective on the most pivotal themes of political theory. This remarkable study of anticolonial Vietnamese intellectuals shows that how they conceptualized dignity mattered for their cause and time—but also that their arguments remain worthwhile for anyone thinking about emancipation in the modern world.”

 Samuel Moyn, Yale University

“The Architects of Dignity rigorously mines more than a century of Vietnamese anti-colonial thinking to bring to light a distinctively Vietnamese tradition of political theorizing, one that asserts the importance of particular affects - collective dignity, indignation, and shame - in both revolutionary action and post-colonial nation-building. Pham brilliantly shows how political thinking that emerges from political struggle can profoundly disrupt, diversify, and transform the field of political theory itself.”

Nick Bromell, author of The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass

“With great nuance, instructive clarity, and vivid detail, Pham illuminates the complex debates between Vietnamese theorists and activists in the French colonial period as they responded to the harms and injustices of colonialism, conceptualized resistance and resilience, and mobilized shame and indignation to work out competing visions of national identity. It is rich and revelatory, and there is so much that is noteworthy in Pham’s study.” 

Vicki Hsueh, Western Washington University

“Pham’s The Architects of Dignity demonstrates how poorly we’ve understood shame under colonialism. Neither a sign of internalized inferiority nor a wound of assimilation, Pham shows us something stranger and truer in Vietnam: shame could be a deliberate instrument of self-assertion, the manifestation of a people’s wish to surpass their colonial condition. An astounding book.”

Kevin Duong, University of Virginia

"This is an original book that makes important contributions to Vietnamese studies and will broaden the minds of both scholars of Vietnam and other students of decolonization. I really enjoyed reading something that is so novel and compelling."

Sophie Quinn-Judge, author of Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, 1919-1941

“In this vitally important book, Kevin Pham smashes two-dimensional Anglophone pictures of ‘Vietnam’ as simply a war, skillfully bringing to life the vast richness and originality of twentieth-century Vietnamese political ideas and the diverse thinkers who sought to motivate national independence through a sense of collective dignity.”

Douglas Thompson, University of South Carolina

“Theories of nationalism have examined the emotional bonds that create national communities, but they have tended to focus more on pride or other positive feelings rather than shame as in The Architects of Dignity. Through such a focus, the author brings forward convincing criticisms against Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and other theorists of decolonization for their denial of the agency of colonial subjects.”  

Tuong Vu, author of Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology 

“The Architects of Dignity is a landmark exposition of Vietnamese anticolonialism, tracing a vivid intellectual history of modern Vietnamese political thought. Pham beautifully captures how pioneering figures such as Phan Bội Châu, Hồ Chí Minh, and Phan Chu Trinh appealed, counter-intuitively, to national shame as a spur to anticolonial resistance and to the reclamation of collective dignity. A profoundly original study of an underserved group of thinkers, this book elegantly recovers the granular nuance of its protagonists’ arguments and situates them in the wider ideological constellation of anticolonial politics. This is comparative political theory at its finest.”

Inder Marwah, McMaster University 

"An excellent read for those outside academia who perhaps shy away from serious nonfiction texts but want to learn more about foundational figures, thinking, and movements in recent Vietnamese history[...] The author’s prose is clear and inviting, avoiding the dense jargon and assumed familiarity with outside work one has good reason to fear from academic works. Thus, if the six thinkers and their theories sound remotely interesting, the book is worth picking up... Fun is a word I’ve never used to describe academic texts. And while reading Architects of Dignity probably doesn’t match most people’s definition of fun, one cannot help but feel that the author had fun writing it, and some of that transfers to the reader." 

Paul Christiansen, reviewed in Saigoneer. Click here to read.

"Pham’s book is an important intervention into a political theory literature that risks growing stale—how many new indictments of global inequality perpetuated by imperial and colonial powers can the field bear? Pham’s work demonstrates how a new generation of anticolonial political theorists might proceed: he challenges concepts en vogue in various streams of contemporary political theory, not simply in liberalism but also in anticolonial and decolonial theory. Not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, Pham challenges and complicates concepts, rather than embarking on a mission to reject them. His is not a ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’—and that is much to his and this book’s credit." 

Gabriel Mares, reviewed in Contemporary Political Theory.

"A landmark contribution to Comparative Political Theory [...] By interweaving the insights of six influential Vietnamese political thinkers into a cohesive narrative, Pham compellingly argues that Vietnamese thinkers are significant not only as historical figures who adapted European and Asian ideas to the Vietnamese context, but also as original theorists offering profound insights into concepts such as shame, dignity, democracy, civilization, and progress. [...] Pham effectively uses the case of Vietnam to encourage scholars of postcolonial studies to take more seriously the productive potential of nationalist intellectuals’ fierce critiques of their own nations within the colonial context."  

Dongxian Jiang, reviewed in Theory & Event.

"This is an important book that is written in clear prose. Its attempt to connect the ideas of these six thinkers is innovative, and its close readings are frequently excellent. This book is likely to be widely read in such a way as to make many more scholars aware of Vietnamese contributions to political thought. For anyone interested in modern Vietnamese history or politics, it is a must-read." 

Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox, Western Connecticut University

"It is no easy feat to be able to weave together a discussion of six political thinkers of different backgrounds, histories, and contexts into a streamlined narrative. [...] Pham’s work stands out for its ambitious attempt to weave six major twentieth-century Vietnamese thinkers into a coherent analysis of dignity and national shame. It challenges readers to reconsider how decolonization and political theory are defined by rooting these processes in Vietnamese historical realities. For political theorists, Pham’s book demonstrates how non-Western thinkers have long engaged with questions of rights, ethics, and governance outside the standard liberal or Marxist frames, such as through questions of Confucian morality and civilizational identity. For Vietnam specialists, it offers a fresh perspective on familiar (and less familiar) political and intellectual figures, reframing them as part of a broader journey toward national self-definition and dignity."

Cindy Anh Nguyen, University of California, Los Angeles

"A useful and often penetrating survey of key twentieth-century Vietnamese thinkers. Through its thoughtful and nuanced engagement with their political views, the book opens up new possibilities for rethinking the intellectual history of modern Vietnam."

Duy Lap Nguyen, Author of The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam

"One of the most exciting contributions to the history of political thought and comparative political theory. It provides a powerful yet sophisticated comparative historical examination of the political thoughts of six Vietnamese intellectuals who grappled with the dignity of the Vietnamese nation during and after the colonial period and offers an insightful perspective on the connection between shame and national dignity. Given the near complete absence of studies on Vietnamese political thought in the Anglophone academic world, The Architects of Dignity stands alone by investigating the political thoughts of some of the most prominent Vietnamese political thinkers and their interactions during the period of Vietnam’s painful introduction to Western modernity through French colonization."

Sungmoon Kim, City University of Hong Kong