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voices of the women of color (Barbara Christian and myself) meet here in the sequence about this village, whose people's income thrives on tourism. The meeting concerns the controversy of giving and taking. As is fairly well-known, in the first-world/third-world relationship, what may assert itself in appearance as "giving" very often turns out to be nothing but a form of taking and taking again. The problematic of donor and acceptor is thus played out in that part in the sound track: for example, the Linda Peckham voice says, "They call it giving"; my voice says, "We call it self-gratification"; the Barbara Christian voice says, "We call it self-gratification." This can be said to be the only place in the film where the first-world and third-world voices work in opposition. Most of the time, it was important for me that the voices meet or not meet, but that they are not just set up in opposition to one another.
The voice of Western logic quotes a number of Western writers, including Cixous, [Gaston] Bachelard, and Éluard. For me, these quotations are very relevant to the context of the dwelling I was in. I don't situate myself in opposition to them just because the writers are Westerners. Actually, in a public debate, a white man resentfully asked me why I quoted Heidegger and added, "Why not let
us
quote him?" This is like saying that I have encroached on some occupied territory and that the exclusive right to use Heidegger belongs to Euro-Americans. Such ethnocentric rationale is hard to believe (although not the least surprising) when you think of such figures of modernity as Picasso or Brecht (to mention just two): what would their works be like without their exposure to African sculpture or to Japanese and Chinese theater? History constantly needs to be rewritten. In fact, whether I like it or not, Heidegger is also part of my hybrid culture.
MacDonald:
In effect the sound track is a nexus for
all
these voices. And all these voices meet in you; you're not only a first-person observer, you have internalized many voices.
Trinh:
Exactly. The place of hybridity is also the place of identity.
MacDonald:
Actually, different forms of culture are present in Africa; there's no point in pretending that African peoples live in isolation from the world.
Trinh:
Sometimes you can never win. On the one hand, I encounter reactions such as "Why don't you show more of the trucks and the bicycles we see all the time in African villages?" When I hear such questions, I can tell the type of villages the questioner is familiar with; he may have been to rural Africa, but he seems to have no idea of the villages I went to, which are fairly remote and difficult of access. On the other hand, some viewers ask, "Why show all the signs of industrial society in these villages?"referring here to the way the camera lingers,