ABSTRACT
A few Western scholars, however, despite their focus on the American side of the war in Vietnam and their lack of mastery of indigenous languages, have avoided some of the more debilitating results of Cartesianism. The task thrust upon the scholar/activists of the second generation, both credentialed Asianists and self-taught types, was "compensatory scholarship". The work of second-generation Indochina scholars was often developed in the intellectual gladiatorial contests that were institutionalized in the teach-in movement of the 1960s. Thus Fall belatedly joined the second generation's demolition project, the precondition for the third generation's reconstruction of a reliable and useful Vietnamese national history. Versions of this Cartesianism—especially in its ethnocentric form—per-meate not only Western scholarship on Vietnam but popular attitudes as well. A few Western scholars, however, despite their focus on the American side of the war in Vietnam and their lack of mastery of indigenous languages, have avoided some of the more debilitating results of Cartesianism.
