On April 22, 2021, the Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), joined in co-sponsorship by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology and the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, welcomed Dr. Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, to present and discuss her new book “Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam,” via Zoom. Dr. Nic Sammond, Director of CSUS, opened the event with a land acknowledgement. Alongside Dr. Tu, there were three other panelists, all from the University of Toronto: Dr. Matthew Farish, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Undergraduate, of Geography and Planning, Dr. Edward Jones-Imhotep, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Dr. Elizabeth Wijaya, Assistant Professor and Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies.
Tu explained that her book was originally meant to be a study of luxury consumption and the Vietnamese beauty industry in a post-socialist state. However, it shifted into one of understanding what consumed women working in the industry. Saigon had ‘built a new skin’ after the implementation of Doi Moi, a Vietnamese policy embracing a social market economy, to cover the wounds of war, colonialism, and occupation and instead reveal a new sovereign state and ascending economy. Many female workers at Calyx Spa, where Tu conducted an ethnography, noticed changes in their skin when Vietnam grew to display its economic growth and success through a shift in manufacturing and agricultural processes.
In an exploration to dive beyond the surface of skin, she worked back to the efforts of wartime scientists in the United States military’s dermatological research program during the Vietnam War. These scientists endeavoured to protect the skin of American soldiers, but their efforts are inseparable from the long-term physical effects of the war. Tu ultimately wanted to learn more about the legacies of the chemical war by exploring stories of ‘skin’ to the renewed Saigon.
Tu’s book works across transpacific studies and histories of U.S. empire, especially the production of biomedical knowledge, and shows that damaged ecologies can become landscapes of alternate imaginations.
Several discussions centered around Tu’s research approach: Jones-Imhotep acknowledged the discomfort on writing about “weird” topics like skin, noting the growing importance of researching uncomfortable subjects in academia. In the process of creating her book, Tu was unexpectedly presented with discomforts both personal and professional, especially in U.S-based archives. Unravelling the meanings of skin was also difficult considering the normalized understanding of skin as a biological organ.
The women at Calyx helped shape Tu’s research methodology and approach. The instability of skin encouraged her to realize that analysis is also unstable and can change. In her research, touch was also important in the story of diagnosis, which contrasted with methods in western dermatology where there are fears of being in proximity. In this matter, the panel recognized the importance of different forms of knowledge. Wijaya noted that visibility may lead to invisibility and questioned the role of interpreting memories embedded onto surfaces and how they are transmitted. Tu agreed, emphasizing the importance of understanding history through different senses and that the refusal to sense or a misrecognition can affect memories. In relation to a timely topic, she also noted that Black vulnerability continues to be invisibilized every time a body camera refuses to see.
Farish asked about the significance of military dermatologists. Tu explained that dermatology emerged out of an intimate relationship between science and militarism in the United States. When looking into the history of the relationship, similarities in research methodology can be recognized too. Prominent figures across these two groups, scientists and the military, had parallel ideas that prisoners and soldiers – captives – made the best type of human subject, which is a foundational idea of the business of science today despite its dismissal. Even though there is debate over the extent of scientists’ knowledge during the war, it is widely recognized that they were aware of the costs of chemical use. Tu also noted that an entire field was created to protect soldiers while unleashing violence on everybody else, demonstrating the willingness to rationalize harm.
As a follow-up question, Farish asked about the shifting moment in morality between academia and the military. Tu responded by recognizing that the 1960s were a period of techno-optimism, and in the scientific field of dermatology, development often led to fantasies. Throughout the United States’ involvement in different wars from the Philippines to Iraq, a consistent idea in this history has been that imperial bodies are physically out of place but morally in the correct place. Jones-Imhotep agreed, noting that the history of the invulnerability of skin also follows a technological invulnerability. In contrast to how skin remembers, machines and objects are created with the intention of not seeing, such as without registering environmental effects, demonstrating the histories of failure and linking back to the different ways of seeing and not seeing.
Following the issue of vulnerability, Jones-Imhotep wondered whether white fragility was a part of a larger white supremacy project or domination of power. Wijaya noted that white fragility was relevant to women being saved by racialized men and illustrated fragility as a means to claim supremacy. Using the story of the Princess and the Pea, she inferred that the princess’s sensitivity to the pea was a marker of sovereignty. In this case, fragility becomes a fantasy of biological racism with a higher pinning of spiritual status. The white man is typically seen as someone who cannot handle the heat of the tropics, while local populations are seen comfortable in their environment, which links to the indifference of suffering because for the local populations, life appears to matter less. Tu added that the white man is only seen as fragile when situated as a settler colonial subject despite always being in dominance. In looking to these historical moments, it is significant to observe how white populism shifted from the trope of male dominance to the white male as a fragile subject under threat.
Farish recognized Tu’s intention to hold the histories of the women at Calyx and the American military distinct from each other in her book, even despite the relationships at the study’s heart. Tu realized that the moral centre of her book were the women at Calyx and was ultimately trying to understand their struggles, not rescuing and giving more power to these military dermatologists. In that respect, Tu intentionally started and ended the book with the women at Calyx.
Having traditionally considered herself a scholar of Asian-American and American studies, Tu is realizing her interests in the entanglements between the United States and Asia. Despite no Asian-American characters in her book, her research helped her to clarify questions in Asian American Studies. Going forward, she is working on an ‘insourcing’ project about the movement of Asian manufacturers to the United States.
In reviewing Tu’s “Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam,” the event’s panel touched on the United States archives, research methodology, ways of seeing, memory, and vulnerability. Offering a plethora of links to contemporary issues, Tu’s book and the panel is a reminder of the paradoxical depth of ‘surface’ histories.
Ingrid Wong is a third-year student majoring in Political Science and History. Having just returned from a gap year in Hong Kong working in policy regulation for the Asian media industry, she developed an interest in data governance and censorship in Southeast Asia. As Lead Editor, she is looking to foster curiosity and cultivate a deeper understanding of Southeast Asia at the University of Toronto and in the Western hemisphere as the region’s significance in the global arena increases.