Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other.- Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

Three essays and a coda, each working on the borderline between "theory and poetry" (42), remarkably illustrated with montages of stills from Trinh Minh-ha's films. Each of the essays is a gloss on one of the keywords of the title: Woman, Native, Other, all try to understand "writing," and other forms of cultural production. An exemplum of cultural studies, Trinh works with and questions concepts in feminist practice, anthropology, and literary criticism. Her special fascination is the way she attempts a fusion of certain post-structuralist practices (of decentering, of multiple subject positions, the attack on positivist social science; the critique of binary thinking) with certain romantic gynocritical practices (the insistence upon a special...