Once Bodies Have Remembered

Abstract

This essay discusses leprosy patients’ lived realities during the transformation of Quy Hòa, a former Catholic-run leprosarium in south central Vietnam, from a religious care center into a state socialist institution. The change in leprosy care resulted in a radically divergent experience in which subjectivities were reshaped by socialist citizenship amid rampant poverty. Meanwhile, hard physical labor for economic survival, one prominent feature of this period, significantly disfigured bodies already afflicted by leprosy, rendering bodily loss a mnemonic for this memorable era.