The article uses Derrida's spectrality to look at magical realism in South Vietnamese and diasporic literature in Vietnamese. Diasporic literature has been said to be either a simple extension of literature from the Republic of Vietnam or a drastic break, with its prevalent use of magic. The article argues instead that the very disruption of the history of the South is the creative force behind both. It is the death of the South foretold that animated Republican writing. And it is the death of the South that forces the symbolization of history in the new global economic context of diasporic fiction.
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