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"SPEAKING NEARBY:"

A CONVERSATION WITH TRINH T. MINH-HA

NANCY N. CHEN

NANCY N . C H E N : One of themostimportantquestions for myself deals with the personal. In your latest film SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS Clairmonte Moore refers to himself as "a member of the residual class" which is a euphemism for "living underground, for living outside the norm, and for living outside of the status quo." Then another character Dewi refers to having the "pull" of being here and there. I think that this reflects on the personal and I would like to ask how your family background or personal experience has influenced your work,

TRINH T. MINH-HA: Although the ideology of "starting from the source" has always proved to be very limiting, I would take that question into consideration since the speaking or interviewing subject is never apolitical, and such a question coming from you may be quite differ- ently nuanced. There is not much, in the kind of education we receive here in the West, that emphasizes or even recognizes the importance of constantly having contact with what is actually within ourselves, or of understanding a structure from within ourselves out. The tendency is always to relate to a situation or to an object as if it is only outside of oneself. Whereas elsewhere, in Vietnam, or in other Asian and African cultures for example, one often learns to "know the world inwardly," so that the deeper we go into ourselves, the wider we go into society. For me, this is where the challenge lies in terms of materializing a reality, because the personal is not naturally political, and every personal story is not necessarily political.

In talking about the personal, it is always difficult to draw that fine line between what is merely individualis-

tic and what may be relevant to a wider number of people. Nothing is given in the process of understand- ing the "social" of our daily lives. So every single work I come up with is yet another attempt to inscribe this constant flow from the inside out and outside in. The interview with Clairmonte in SHOOT FORTHE CONTENTS is certainly a good example to start with. His role in the film is both politically and personally significant. In locating himself, Clairmonte has partly contributed to situating the place from which the film speaks. The way a number of viewers reacted to his presence in the film has confirmed what I thought might happen when I was working on it. Usually in a work on China, people do not expect the voice of knowledge to be other than that of an insider — here a Chinese — or that of an institutionalized authority— a scholar whose expertise on China would immediately give him or her the license to speak about such and such culture, and whose super- imposed name and title on the screen serve to validate what he or she has to say. No such signpost is used in SHOOT; Clairmonte, who among all the interviewees discusses Chinese politics most directly, is of African rather than Chinese descent; and furthermore, there is no immediate urge to present him as someone who "speaks as…" Wliat you have is the voice of a person who little by little comes to situate himself through the diverse social and political positions he assumes, as well as through his analysis of himself and of the media in the States. So when Clairmonte designates himself literally and figuratively as being from a residual class, this not only refers to the place from which he analyzes China— which is not that of an expert about whom he has spoken

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jokingly, but more let's say that of an ordinary person who is well versed in politics. The designation, as you've pointed out, also reflects back on my own situation: I have been making films on Africa from a hybrid site where the meeting of several cultures (on non-Western ground) and the notions of outsider and insider (Asian and Third World in the context of Africa) need to be re- read.

This is where you talk about the intersubjective situation in your writings.

Right. I have dealt with this hybridity in my previous films quite differently, but the place from which Clairmonte speaks in SHOOT is indirectly linked to the place from which I spoke in relation to Africa. Just as it is bothersome to see a member of the Third World talking about (the representation of) another Third World culture — instead of minding our own business (laughter) as we have been herded to — it is also bother- some for a number of viewers who had seen SHOOT, to have to deal with Clairmonte's presence in it. And of course, the question never comes out straight; it always comes out obliquely like: "Why the Black man in the film? Has this been thought out?" Or, in the form of assumptions such as: "Is he a professor at Berkeley?" "Is he teaching African Studies or Sociology?"

In some ways those questions indicate there's a need for authenticity. My question about Clairmonte concerns what he said about identity and I think that the issue of identity runs throughout all of your work. You 've often talked about hyphenated peoples and I'm interested if in any way that notion stems from your personal experience. Have you felt that people have tried to push you, to be a Vietnamese- American or Asian-American, or woman-filmmaker? All of these different categories is what Clairmonte points out to. In your works and writings you distinctly push away that tendency. I think you are quite right in pointing out earlier that there is a very strong tendency to begin with a psycho- logical sketch like "What are your primary influences…" (laughter) I would be very interested in learning about your particular experiences in Vietnam. Could you talk more about that?

I will. But again, for having been asked this question many times, especially in interviews for newspapers, I would link here the problematization of identity in my work with what the first chapter of Woman, Native, Other opened on: the dilemma, especially in the context of women, of having one's work explained (or brought to closure) through one's personality and particular at- tributes. In such a highly individualistic society as the one we belong to here, it is very comforting for a reader to consume difference as a commodity by starting with the personal difference in culture or background, which is the best way to escape the issues of power, knowledge and subjectivity raised.

My past in Vietnam does not just belong to me. And since the Vietnamese communities, whether here in the U.S. or there in Vietnam, are not abstract entities, I can only speak while learning to keep silent, for the risk of jeopardizing someone's reputation and right to speech is always present. Suffice it to say that I come from a large family, in which three different political factions existed. These political tendencies were not always freely as- sumed, they were bound to circumstances as in the case of the family members who remained in Hanoi (where I was born) and those who were compelled to move to Saigon (where I grew up). The third faction comprised those involved with the National Liberation Front in the South. This is why the dualistic divide between pro- and anti-communists has always appeared to me as a simplis- tic product of the rivalry between, (what once were) the two superpowers. It can never even come close to the complexity of the Vietnam reality. All three factions had suffered under the regime to which they belong, and all three had, at one time or another, been the scapegoat of specific political moments. As a family however, we love each other dearly despite the absurd situations in which we found ourselves divided. This is a stance that many viewers have recognized in SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM, but hopefully it is one that they will also see in the treatment of Mao as a figure and in the multiple play between Left and Right, or Right and Wrong in SHOOT.

How I came to study in the States still strikes me today as a miracle. The dozen of letters I blindly sent out to a number of universities to seek admission into work- study programs… It was like throwing a bottle to the sea.

NANCY N. CHEN IS A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.

SHE IS WORKING ON HER DISSERTATION, "POSSESSION & THE STATE: DEVIATION & MENTAL HEALTH IN THE PRC," AND

A FILM ON POPULAR HEALING PRACTICES IN CHINA.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 8 Number 1 Spring 1992 8 3

But, fortunately enough, a small school in Ohio (Wilmington College) of no more than a thousand and some students wanted a representative ofVietnam. And so there I was, studying three days of the week and working the other three days at a hospital, in addition to some other small odd jobs that helped me to get through financially. As an "international student," I was put in contact with all other foreign students, as well as with "minority" students who were often isolated from the mainstream of Euro-American students. It was hardly surprising then that the works of African American poets and playwrights should be the first to really move and impress me. By the sheer fact that I was with an international community, I was introduced to a range of diverse cultures. So the kind of education I got in such an environment (more from outside than inside the classroom) would not have been as rich if I had stayed in Vietnam or if I had been born in the States. Some of my best friends there, and later on at the University of Illinois (where I got an M.A in French Literature and Music; a Master of Music in Composition; and a Ph.D in Comparative Literatures) were Haitians, Senegalese and Kenyans. Thanks to these encounters, I subse- quently decided to go to Senegal to live and teach.

When I planned for university education abroad, I could have tried France (where financially speaking, education is free) instead of the United States. I decided on the United States mainly because I wanted a rupture {laughter) with the educational background in Vietnam that was based on a Vietnamized model of the old, pre- 1968 French system. Later on, I did go to France after I came to the States, in a mere university exchange program. It was one of these phenomena of colonialism: I was sent there to teach English to French students {laughter).

During this year in France I didn't study with any of the writers whose works I appreciate. Everything that I have done has always been a leap away from what I have learned, and nothing in my work directly reflects the education I have had except through a relation of dis- placement and rupture as mentioned. While in Paris, I studied at the Sorbonne Paris-IV. It was the most conservative school of the Sorbonne. But one of the happy encounters I made was with noted Vietnamese scholar and musician Tran Van Khe, who continues until today to shuttle to and fro between France and Vietnam for his research, and with whom I studied ethnomusicology. That's the part that I got the most out

of in Paris. So you go to Paris, finally to learn ethnomusicology with a Vietnamese {laughter).

This throws my question about intellectual influences or ruptures the question (laughter). In all your works, but particularly your writings on anthropology, ethnography, and ethnographic films, there's a critique of the standard, the center of rationality, the center of TRUTH. I think that critique is also shared by many anthropologists, especially those in the post-structuralist tradition. Do you think that there is more possibility in ethnography if people use these tools? What do you think would be possible with reflexivity or with multivocality?

Anthropology is just one site of discussion among others in my work. I know that a number of people tend to focus obsessively on this site. But such a focus on anthropology despite the fact that the arguments ad- vanced involve more than one occupied territory, disci- pline, profession, and culture seems above all to tell us where the stakes are the highest. Although angry re- sponses from professionals and academics of other fields to my films and books are intermittently expected, most of the masked outraged reactions do tend to come from Euro-American anthropologists and cultural experts. This, of course, is hardly surprising. They are so busy defending the discipline, the institution, and the spe- cialized knowledge it produces that what they have to say on works like mine only tells us about themselves and the interests at issue. I am reminded here of a conference panel years ago in which the discussion on one of my previous films was carried out with the participation of three Euro-American anthropologists. Time and again they tried to wrap up the session with dismissive judge- ments, but the audience would not let go of the discus- sion. After over an hour of intense arguments, during which a number of people in the audience voiced their disapproval of the anthropologists' responses, one woman was so exasperated and distressed, that she simply said to them: "the more you speak, the further you digyour own grave."

If we take the critical work in REASSEMBLAGE for example, it is quite clear that it is not simply aimed at the anthropologist, but also at the missionary, the Peace Corps volunteer, the tourist, and last but not least at myself as onlooker. In mywriting and filmmaking, it has always been important for me to carry out critical work in such a way that there is room for people to reflect on

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their own struggle and to use the tools offered so as to further it on their own terms. Such a work is radically incapable of prescription. Hence, these tools are some- times also appropriated and turned against the very filmmaker or writer, which is a risk I am willing to take. I have, indeed, put myself in a situation where I cannot criticize without taking away the secure ground on which I stand. All this is being said because your question, although steered in a slightly different direc- tion, does remind me indirectly of another question which I often get under varying forms: at a panel discussion in Edinburgh on Third cinema for example, after two hours of interaction with the audience, and of lecture by panelists, including myself, someone came to me and said in response to my paper: "Oh, but then anthropology is still possible!" I took it both as a constructive statement and a misinterpretation. A con- structive statement, because only a critical work devel- oped to the limits or effected on the limits (here, of anthropology) has the potential to trigger such a ques- tion as: "Is anthropology still a possible project?" And a misinterpretation, because this is not just a question geared toward anthropology, but one that involves all of us from the diverse fields of social sciences, humanities and arts.

Whether reflexivity and multivocality contribute anything to ethnography or not would have to depend on the way they are practiced. It seems quite evident that the critique I made of anthropology is not new; many have done it before and many are doing it now- But what remains unique to each enterprise are not so much the objects as the relationships drawn between them. So the question remains: how? How is reflexivity understood and materialized? If it is reduced to a form of mere breast-beating or of self-criticism for further improve- ment, it certainly does not lead us very far. I have written more at length on this question elsewhere ("Documen- tary Is/Not a Name," October No. 52, 1990) and to simplify a complex issue, I would just say here that if the tools are dealt with only so as to further the production of anthropological knowledge, or to find a better solu- tion for anthropology as a discipline, then what is achieved is either a refinement in the pseudo-science of appropriating Otherness or a mere stir within the same frame. But if the project is carried out precisely at that limit where anthropology could be abolished in what it tries to institutionalize, then nobody here is on safe ground. Multivocality, for example, is not necessarily a

solution to the problems of centralized and hierarchical knowledge when it is practiced accumulatively — by juxtaposing voices that continue to speak within identi- fied boundaries. Like the much abused concept of multiculturalism, multivocality here could also lead to the bland "melting-pot" type of attitude, in which "multi" means "no" — no voice — or is used only to better mask the Voice — that very place from where meaning is put together. On the other hand, multivocality can open up to a non-identifiable ground where boundaries are al- ways undone, at the same time as they are accordingly assumed. Working at the borderline of what is and what no longer is anthropology one also knows that if one crosses that border, if one can depart from where one is, one can also return to it more freely, without attachment to the norms generated on one side or the other. So the work effected would constantly question both its interi- ority and its exteriority to the frame of anthropology.

This goes back to your previous point that being within is also being without, being inside and outside. I think this answers my next question which is about how if naming identifying and defining are problematic, how does one go about practicing? I think that you are saying that it also opens up a space being right on that boundary. I would now like to turn from theory to filmmaking practice. Your writing has often been compared to performance art. Could yousay that this is also true ofyour filmmaking as well in the four films that you have made so far?

I like the thought that my texts are being viewed as performance art {laughter). I think it is very adequate. Viewers have varied widely in their approaches to my films. Again, because of the way these films are made, how the viewers enter them tells us acutely how they situate themselves. The films have often been compared to musical compositions and appreciated by people in performance, architecture, dance or poetry for example. So I think there is something to be said about the filmmaking process; Although I have never consciously taken inspiration from any specific art while I write, shoot or edit a film, for me, the process of making a film comes very close to those of composing music and of writing poetry. When one is not just trying to capture an object, to explain a cultural event, or to inform for the sake of information; when one refuses to commodify knowledge, one necessarily disengages oneself from the mainstream ideology of communication, whose linear

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and transparent use of language and the media reduces these to a mere vehicle of ideas. Thus, every time one puts forth an image, a word, a sound or a silence, these are never instruments simply called upon to serve a story or a message. They have a set of meanings, a function, and a rhythm of their own within the world that each film builds anew. This can be viewed as being charac- teristic of the way poets use words and composers use sounds.

Here I'll have to make clear that through the notion of "poetic language," I am certainly not referring to the poetic as the site for the consolidation of a subjectivity, or as an estheticized practice of language. Rather, I am referring to the fact that language is fundamentally reflexive, and only in poetic language can one deal with meaning in a revolutionary way. For the nature of poetry is to offer meaning in such a way that it can never end with what is said or shown, destabilizing thereby the speaking subject and exposing the fiction of all rational- ization. Roland Barthes astutely summed up this situa- tion when he remarked that "the real antonym of the 'poetic' is not the prosaic, but the stereotyped." Such a statement is all the more perceptive as the stereotyped is not a false representation, but rather, an arrested repre- sentation of a changing reality. So to avoid merely falling into this pervasive world of the stereotyped and the cliche*d, filmmaking has all to gain when conceived as a performance that engages as well as questions (its own) language. However, since the ideology of what consti- tutes "clarity" and "accessibility" continues to be largely taken for granted, poetic practice can be "difficult" to a number of viewers, because in mainstream films and media our ability to play with meanings other than the literal ones that pervade our visual and aural environ- ment is rarely solicited. Everything has to be packaged for consumption.

With regard to your films you've always been able to show that even what one sees with one's eyes, as you say in your books, is not necessarily the truth. My next question concerns Laura Mulvey 's comment on language where any tool can be used for dominance as well as empowerment. Do you think that this is also true of poetic approaches to film?

Oh yes. This is what I have just tried to say in clarifying what is meant by the "poetic" in a context that does not lend itself easily to classification. As numerous feminist works of the last two decades have shown, it is illusory to

think that women can remain outside of the patriarchal system of language. The question is, as I mentioned earlier, how to engage poetical language without simply turning it into an estheticized, subjectivist product, hence allowing it to be classified. Language is at the same time a site for empowerment and a site for enslavement. And it is particularly enslaving when its workings re- main invisible. Now, how one does bring that out in a film, for example, is precisely what I have tried to do in SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM. This is an aspect of the film that highly differentiates it, let's say, from REASSEMBLAGE. If in the latter the space of language and meaning is constantly interrupted or effaced by the gaps of non-senses, absences, and silences; in Surname Viet, this space is featured manifestly as presences — albeit presences positioned in the context of a critical politics of interview and translation.

Viewers who take for granted the workings of language and remain insensitive to their very visible treatment in SURNAME VIET, also tend to obscure the struggle of women and their difficult relation to the symbolic contract. Hence, as expected, these viewers' readings are likely to fall within the dualist confine of a pro- or anti-communist rationale. Whereas, what is important is not only what the women say but what site of language they occupy (or do not occupy) in their struggle. With this also comes the play between the oral and the written, the sung and the said, the rehearsed and the non-rehearsed, and the different uses of English as well as of Vietnamese. So, if instead of reading the film conventionally from the point of view of content and subject matter, one reads it in terms of language plural- ity, comparing the diverse speeches — including those translated and reenacted from the responses by women in Vietnam, and those retrieved "authentically" on the site from the women in the States about their own lives — then one may find oneself radically shifting ground in one's reading. The play effected between literal and non-literal languages can be infinite and the two should not be mutually exclusive of each other. Everything I criticize in one film can be taken up again and used differently in another film. There is no need to censor ourselves in what we can do.

I'm also intrigued by your works where you mention "talking nearby instead of talking about"— this is one of the techniques you mention to "make visible the invisible. * How might indirect language do precisely that?

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The link is nicely done; especially between "speaking nearby" and indirect language. In other words, a speak- ing that does not objectify, does not point to an object as if it is distant from the speaking subject or absent from the speaking place. A speaking that reflects on itself and can come very close to a subject without, however, seizing or claiming it. A speaking in brief, whose closures are only moments of transition opening up to other possible moments of transition — these are forms of indirectness well understood by anyone in tune with poetic language. Every element constructed in a film refers to the world around it, while having at the same time a life of its own. And this life is precisely what is lacking when one uses word, image, or sound just as an instrument of thought. To say therefore that one prefers not to speak about but rather to speak nearby, is a great challenge. Because actually, this is not just a technique or a statement to be made verbally. It is an attitude in life, a way of positioning oneself in relation to the world. Thus, the challenge is to materialize it in all aspects of the film — verbally, musically, visually. That challenge is renewed with every work I realize, whether filmic or written.

The term of the issue raised is, of course, much broader than the questions generated by any of the specific work I've completed (such as REASSEMBLAGE, in which the speaking about and speaking nearby serve as a point of departure for a cultural and cinematic reflec- tion) . Truth never yields itself in anything said or shown. One cannot just point a camera at it to catch it: the very effort to do so will kill it. It is worth quoting here again Walter Benjamin for whom, "nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought." Truth can only be approached indirectly if one does not want to lose it and find oneself hanging on to a dead, empty skin. Even when the indirect has to take refuge in the very figures of the direct, it continues to defy the closure of a direct reading. This is a form of indirectness that I have to deal with in SURNAME VIET, but even more so in SHOOT. Because here, there is necessarily, among others, a lay- ered play between political discourse and poetical lan- guage, or between the direct role of men and the indirect role of women.

That leads me to some questions that I had about your latest film because you choose Mao as a political figure and he is also one who plays with language. There is a quote in the film: "Mao ruled through the power of rhymes and prov-

erbs. " I think this is a very apt statement about the scope of the film. I'm curious as to "Why China?" You mentioned before about how your next project or your next film is a rupture from the previous one. So was going to China just a complete change from SURNAME VIET/3

It's not quite a rupture. I don't see it that way. Nor do I see one film as being better than another; there is no linear progress in my filmic work. There is probably only a way of raising questions differently from different angles in different contexts. The rupture I mentioned earlier has more to do with my general educational background. So why China? One can say that there is no more an answer to this question than to; "Why Africa?" which I often get, and "Why Vietnam?" {laughter)y which I like to also ask in return. Indeed, when people inquire matter-of-factly about my next film in Vietnam, I cannot help but ask "why Vietnam?" Why do I have to focus on Vietnam? And this leads us back to a statement I made earlier, concerning the way marginalized peoples are herded to mind their own business. So that the area, the "homeland" in which they are allowed to work remains heavily marked, whereas the areas in which Euro-Ameri- cans' activities are deployed can go on unmarked. One is here confined to one's own culture, ethnicity, sexuality and gender. And that's often the only way for insiders within the marked boundaries to make themselves heard or to gain approval.

This being said, China is a very important step in my personal itinerary, even though the quest into Chinese culture has, in fact, more to do with the relation between the two cultures — Vietnamese and Chinese — than with anything strictly personal. The Vietnamese people are no exception when it comes to nationalism. Our language is equipped with numerous daily expressions that are extremely pejorative toward our neighbors, especially toward Chinese people. But Vietnam was the site where the Chinese and Indian cultures met, hence what is known as the Vietnamese culture certainly owes much from the crossing of these two ancient civilizations.

Every work I have realized was designed to transform my own consciousness. If I went to Africa to dive into a culture that was mostly unknown to me then, I went to China mainly because I was curious as to how I could depart from what I knew of Her. The prejudices that the Vietnamese carry vis-a-vis the Chinese are certainly his- torical and political. The past domination ofVietnam by China and the antagonistic relationship nurtured be-

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tween the two nations (this relationship has only been normalized some months ago) have been weighing so heavily on the Vietnamese psyche that very often Viet- namese identity would be defined in contradistinction to everything thought to be Chinese. And yet it merits looking a bit harder at the Vietnamese culture — at its music, to mention a most explicit example — to realize how much it has inherited from both China and India. It is not an easy task to deny their influences, even when people need to reject them in order to move on. An anecdote whose humor proved to be double-edged was that, during my stay in China, I quickly learned to restrain myself from telling people that I was originally from Vietnam — unless someone really wanted to know (precisely because of the high tension between the two countries at the time.) The local intellectuals, however, seemed to be much more open vis-a-vis Vietnam as they did not think of Her as an enemy country but rather, as a neighbor or "a brother." This, to the point that one of them even told me reassuringly in a conversation: "Well you know it's alright that you are from Vietnam; after all, She is a province of China." {laughter)

So it reifies that power relationship…

Yes, right…{laughter) O n a personal level, I did want to go further than the facades of such a power relationship and to understand China differently. But the task was not all easy because to go further here also meant to go back to an ancestral heritage of the Vietnamese culture. I've tried to bring this out in the film through a look at politics via the arts.

I think Wu Tian Ming's commentary in the film gives a very good description of the present state of the arts in China. I have another question. In your book When the Moon Waxes Red there is a chapter on Barthes and Asia. This is where you talk about his notion of the void and how it is important not to have any fixed notions of what Asia is supposed to be about. You 've stated that SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS is precisely about that void, but one of the difficulties about creating a space where there can be a void is the fact that some people are unnerved by it; there is also the possibility of reifying stereotypes, of reifying the notion of Asia as other or as exotic, or feminine, or mysterious. Do you think that this was something you had thought about carefully in making your film or in the process of

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