Exploring the Social Monad through the Crisis of Articulation

Abstract

If the Vietnam War is the epicenter of the social monad, narratives of children of Vietnam Veterans (COVV) constitute one of the ripple effects radiating out of the initial shock of this historically traumatic event. As Bissell writes,

For the growing-up children of many [Vietnam] vets the war’s remoteness was all but impossible to gauge because it had happened pre-you, before you had come to grasp the sheer accident of your own placement in time, before you recognized your reality—your bedroom, your toys and comic books—had nothing to do with the reality of your father. (Bissell, 2004, 567)