Trinh T. Minh-ha

Trinh T. Minh-ha (1952, Hanoi) is a filmmaker, writer, literary theorist, composer and professor. She teaches in the University of California, Berkeley’s departments of Rhetoric, and Gender and Women’s Studies.

Born in Hanoi in 1952, Trinh emigrated to the United States in 1970 where she studied musical composition, ethnomusicology and French literature, completing her PhD dissertation in 1977 under the title: Un Art sans Oeuvre: l’Anonymat dans les Arts Contemporains [An Art Without Oeuvre: Anonymity in Contemporary Arts]. Since the early 1980s she has developed a complex theoretical, visual and poetic response to the implicit politics regulating the production of discourses and images of cultural difference. Working through the multidimensional effects of imperialism and neo-colonial modernity, her works played a pivotal role in the emergence of postcolonial theory and critique. Her now canonical 1989 book, Woman, Native, Other, investigates the contradictory imperatives faced by an ‘I’ positioned ‘in difference’ as a ‘Third World woman’ in the act of writing, as well as in critiquing the roles of the creator, intellectual and anthropologist. [1]

Trinh has been making films for over thirty years and among her best known are Reassemblage (1982) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1985). Alongside films and installations, she has published numerous essays and books on cinema, cultural politics, feminism and the arts.

Films

• Reassemblage, 1983.
• Shoot for the Contents, 1992.

more.

Publications

(in English unless noted otherwise)

Books

• Un art sans œuvre, ou, l'anonymat dans les arts contemporains, Lathrup Village, MI: International Book Publishers, 1981, 126 pp. Originally presented as the author's dissertation, University of Illinois, 1977. (French)

• with Jean-Paul Bourdier, African Spaces: Designs for Living in Upper Volta, Holmes & Meier, 1985, 229 pp.

• En minuscules, Paris: Le Méridien, 1987, 99 pp. Poems. (French)

• Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, 173 pp. Publisher. Interview: Pratibha Parma (Feminist Review). Reviews: Karen Alexander (Screen), Carole Boyce Davies (Hypatia), Liz Kotz (The Independent), Jeannie Ludlow (L'Esprit Créateur), Patricia Grimshaw (Explorations in Sights and Sounds).
  • Woman Native Other. Postkolonialität und Feminismus schreiben, ed. & intro. Anna Babka, with Matthias Schmidt, trans. Kathrina Menke, Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2010, 261 pp. Publisher. (German)
  • Josei neitibu tasha: posutokoroniarizumu to feminizumu [女性・ネイティヴ・他者: ポストコロニアリズムとフェミニズム], trans. Takemura Kazuko, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店), 1995, 254+22 pp; repr., 2011. (Japanese)
  • Femme, indigène, autre: écrire le féminisme et la postcolonialité, trans. Julia Burtin Zortea and Claire Richard, Montreuil: B42, 2022, 215 pp. Publisher. (French)

• When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics, Routledge, 1991; repr., 2013.

• Framer Framed, New York and London: Routledge, 1992, 276 pp. Film scripts and interviews.
  • Fureima fureimudo [フレイマー・フレイムド], Tokyo: Suiseisha, 2016, 407 pp. (Japanese)

• Texte, Filme und Gespräche, eds. Hedwig Saxenhuber and Madeleine Bernstorff, Munich: Kunstverein München, 1995, 107 pp. (German)

• Drawn From African Dwellings (with Jean-Paul Bourdier), Indiana University Press, 1996, 334 pp. Review.
  • Habiter un monde: architectures de l'Afrique de l'ouest, Paris: Alternatives, 2005, 191 pp. Publisher. (French)
  • Vernacular Architecture of West Africa: A World in Dwelling, Routledge, 2011, 191 pp.

• Cinema Interval, Routledge, 1999; repr., 2012.

• Trinh T. Minh-ha, ed. Kathrin Rhomberg, Vienna: Secession, 2001, 63 pp. [2] (English)/(German)

• Texte, Vienna: Secession, 2001, 32 pp. (German)

• The Digital Film Event, Routledge, 2005.

• Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event, Routledge, 2010, vii+139 pp.
  • Någon annanstans, här inne: immigrationen, flyktingskapet och gränshändelsen, Gothenburg: Glänta, 2012, 207 pp. (Swedish)
  • Ta fang, zai ci chu: qian ju, tao nan yu bian jie ji shi [他方, 在此處: 遷居, 逃難與邊界記事], trans. Wanyu Huang, Taibei Shi: Tian yuan cheng shi wen hua shi ye you xian gong si, 2013, 229 pp. (Chinese)
  • Koko no naka no dokoka e: ijū nanmin kyōkaiteki dekigoto [ここのなかの何処かへ: 移住・難民・境界的出来事], trans. Kobayashi Fukuko, Tokyo: Heibonsha (平凡社), 2014, 265 pp. (Japanese)
  • Odjinud, jež se nachází právě zde, trans. Martin Micka, Prague: tranzit.cz, 2015, 108 pp. [3] (Czech)
  • Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Flucht und das Grenzereignis, eds. Anna Babka and Matthias Schmidt, trans. Dagmar Fink, Susanne Lummerding, Kathrina Menke, Johanna Schaffer, Matthias Schmidt and Katja Wiederspahn, Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2017, 227 pp. Publisher. (German)

• D-Passage: The Digital Way, Duke University Press, 2013, Excerpt on Scribd.

• Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared, Fordham University Press, 2016, 298 pp.

• The Twofold Commitment, ed. Rachel Valinsky, Brooklyn, NY: Primary Information, 2023, 204 pp. Artist book. Publisher.

• Traveling in the Dark, Milan: Mousse, 2023, 288 pp. Additional text by Larys Frogier, and interviews with Ute Meta Bauer, Kaori Nakasone and Mayumo Inoue, Shivani Radhakrishnan, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa and Patricia Alvarez Astacio. Publisher.

Selected essays

• "Difference: 'A Special Third World Women Issue'", Feminist Review 25 (Spring 1987), pp 5-22.
• "Not You/Like You: Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference", Inscriptions 3-4 (1988).
• "Documentary Is/Not a Name", October 52 (Spring 1990), pp 76-98; exp. as "The Totalizing Quest of Meaning", in Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red, 1991, pp 29-50; repr. in Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov, Routledge, 1993, pp 90-107.
• "Ear Below Eye", Ear 9:5/10:1 (Fall 1985); repr. as "Holes in the Sound Wall", in Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red, 1991, pp 201-206.
• "An Acoustic Journey", in Rethinking Borders, ed. John C. Welchman, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp 1-17.
• "Nature's r: A Musical Swoon", in FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture, ed. George Robertson, Routledge, 1996, pp 86-104.
• The Walk of Multiplicity, Feminist Art Coalition, 2019, 7 pp.

Bibliographies

• UC Berkeley Library

Interviews

• Constance Penley, Andrew Ross, "When I Project It Is Silent", Camera Obscura 13-14 (1985); repr. in Minh-ha, Framer Framed, 1992, pp 225-242. Conducted 1983.
• "Woman, Native, Other: Pratibha Parmar Interviews Trinh T. Minh-ha", Feminist Review 36 (Autumn 1990), pp 65-74.
• Laleen Jayamane, Anne Rutherford, "'Why A Fish Pond?' Fiction at the Heart of Documentation", Filmnews 20:10 (Nov 1990), Sydney; repr. in Minh-ha, Framer Framed, 1992, pp 161-179. Conducted June 1990.
• Nancy N. Chen, "'Speaking Nearby:' A Conversation With Trinh T. Minh-ha", Visual Anthropology Review 8:1 (Spring 1992), pp 82-91.
• Tina Spangler, "Interviewer Interviewed: A Discussion with Trinh T. Mihn-ha", Latent Image (Winter 1993).
• Gwendolyn Foster, "A Tale of Love: A Dialogue with Trinh T. Minh-ha", Film Criticism 21:3 (Spring 1997), 89-114.
• Erika Balsom, "‘There is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha", Frieze 199, Nov-Dec 2018.
• Trinh T Minh-ha, Lucie Kim-Chi Mercier, "Interview: Forgetting Vietnam", Radical Philosophy 2.03, Dec 2018.

Literature

• An van Dienderen, "Indirect Flow through Passages: Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Art Practice", Afterall, Spring 2010, pp 90-97, HTML. DOI. [4]

• Gustavo Soranz, O cinema de Trinh T. Minh-Ha: intervalos entre antropologia, cinema e artes visuais, Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2019, 277 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• David Toop, Breath, Rhythm, Silence, Resonance: Listening Beyond Seeing in the Films of Trinh T. Minh-ha, Ghent: Courtisane: KASK Conservatorium: School of Arts Ghent, 2023, 39 pp. Publisher.

Links

• Website, Biography
• Profile on Women Make Movies
• Profile on Prabook
• Wikipedia