Author: Norindr, Panivong

Source: Historical Reflections, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2008 , pp. 89-103(15)

Abstract:

This essay considers the role of personal, affective history in shaping historiography, and more precisely, a post-colonial history of Laos. Relying on a variety of sources, official and family photographs, US diplomatic documents, telegrams and personal notes, and against the backdrop of multiple losses, this article problematizes the questions of biography and the complex links between the personal and the "historical" by narrating my father's professional trajectory over three decades as a civil servant and career diplomat. Pheng Norindr represented Laos at the 1962 Geneva Conference and became the Laotian envoy to the United Stated during the Vietnam War. His entanglement with French colonialism and Cold War politics offers a point of entry into a Laotian historiography that is critical of a monolithic Western history of Laos.

Keywords: HISTORY; PHOTOGRAPHY; AFFECT; LAOS; PHENG NORINDR; FRENCH COLONIALISM; AMERICAN IMPERIALISM; COLD WAR POLITICS; NATION; NARRATION

DOI: 10.3167/hrrh2008.340106

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