Recounting “History”: Documentary as Women's Cinema

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the interview materials in Dai-Sil Kim-Gibson's Silence ‘Broken and Trinh Minh-Ha's Surname Viet Given Name Nam, in order to see whether they can give us immediate access to women's histories without denouncing the quest for objectivity in documentary representation. It is also for this reason that we need to reflect on whether it is possible to avoid trivializing the individuality of oral histories by the overarching rhetoric of documentary. Before we hail the so-called truthful representation of women's voices in documentary, I propose that we need to analyze documentary as an independent genre with both reflexivity and interactivity. Then, functions and limits of orality in film that have been considered as anchored in and, therefore, subjugated to the visual text, need to be reexamined, as well. In short, I will show that the documentary transcriptions of women's testimony lead us to move beyond the “received truth” of official history. By examining women's voices as central forces of historicization—rather than as mere informants—I will argue it is only when we release ourselves from the logic of unity and synchronicity that we understand the individual's subjectivity presented at the moment of interview.