The positioning of Vietnamese authors within the Francophone periodical space in the colonial era

This article aims to analyse the positioning of Vietnamese authors within the space of Francophone periodicals during the colonial era by examining the modalities of their intellectual and symbolic inscription within a cultural field structured by relations of domination. Drawing on a study of two representative publications – the Bulletin de la Société d’Enseignement Mutuel du Tonkin (Bulletin de la SEM) and La Nouvelle Revue Indochinoise (NRI) – the article explores how these journals functioned as sites of recognition, legitimation and testing of Vietnamese voices expressed in the French language. The analysis mobilises a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that brings together Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of fields and the cultural transfer approach developed by Michel Espagne. This theoretical intersection makes it possible to shed light simultaneously on authors’ positioning strategies, the forms of intellectual habitus they construct, and the processes of cultural hybridisation at work within these periodical spaces.