The References of Vietnamese States and the Mechanisms of World Formation1

The article provides a method of exploring ideational polities, which proceeds through highlighting the networks of discursive reference, which are made to ar-gue for the nature or existence or right to existence of a given polity. This method enables a comparative study of the state. As case studies, four paramount con-ceptions of Vietnamese states in the 11th, 15th, and 20th centuries are explored and compared. They show how similarly and differently geopolitical identity was defined by Vietnamese-speaking state-makers at four crucial junctures in Viet-nam's history. They indicate that the state is cofigured but nonidentical with the world. The generation and construction of the world imagined in human mind in-volves the mechanism of coreference. Coreference is a two-level process complex by which a world is united via semiotic universalization at the level of the codes but remains (or becomes) heterogeneous via semantic reorientation at the level of the contents. 1 The Image of Political Order The state is a phenomenon that is pervading and dominating our public life and eve