Mecanismos de sincronización

Kelly Oliver takes psychoanalytic discussions beyond individualist implications toward a social ethics and politics of witnessing. Boldly, resolutely, she insists that, “without

33 _{I did not directly experience losses from the brutalities of war in Vietnam. However, as LaCapra suggests,}

those born after violent historical events may be a part of the larger social “structural trauma” that continues to affect individuals and societies long after a particular event. LaCapra makes these distinctions because he believes that “the historical past is a scene of losses that may be narrated as well as of specific possibilities that may conceivably be received, reconfigured, and transformed in the present or future” in productive ways by individuals who directly experienced historical trauma as well as by “secondary witnesses” (“Trauma” 699). He continues by saying that “[a]cknowledging and affirming—or working through—absence as absence requires the recognition of both the dubious nature of ultimate solutions and the necessary anxiety that cannot be eliminated from the self or projected onto others. It also opens up empowering possibilities in the necessarily limited, nontotalizing, and nonredemptive elaboration of institutions and practices in the creation of a more desirable, perhaps significantly different—but not perfect or totally unified—life in the here and now” (707).

More than agreeing with LaCapra’s specific terminology, what is most important is the marking of these kinds of differences between first-hand experiences and “secondary witnessing” in an attempt to make “crucial distinction[s] between then and now” in order to counter dangerous, unethical appropriations of historical trauma (“Trauma” 699). “The affirmation of absence as absence rather than loss or lack” as well as noting the difference between historical and structural social trauma, “opens up different possibilities and requires different modes of coming to terms with problems [. . .] allow[ing] for [] better determination of historical losses or lacks that do not entail obliteration,” or obfuscation, “of the past” (706).

34 _{LaCapra gives a powerful example of the differences between “absence” and “loss,” and the potential dangers}

and violence that can ensue with such conflations, when he notes that “paradise lost” should really be recognized as a case of “paradise absent” (“Trauma” 706). By noting differences between “absence” and “loss,” “historical losses or lacks can be dealt with in ways that may significantly improve conditions—indeed effect basic structural transformation—without promising secular salvation or a sociopolitical return to a putatively lost (or lacking) unit or community” (706). By “converting absence to loss,” on the other hand, whether purposefully or unknowingly, “one assumes that there was (or at least could be) some original unity, wholeness, security, or identity which others might have ruined, polluted, or contaminated and thus made ‘us’ lose” (707). This formulation may legitimize violence and/or apathy, encouraging people to “get rid of or eliminate those others” in the hope of achieving various supposed “apocalyptic future[s] or sublimely blank

an addressee, without a witness, I cannot exist” (88). I will rely on Oliver’s work on the individual and social implications of witnessing to assist my understanding of the interviews and other performance work conducted in Vietnam, in terms of the necessarily covalent, co- constituting relationships between speaking and listening subjects. “Without an external witness,” Oliver contends, “we cannot develop or sustain the internal witness necessary for the ability to interpret and represent our experience, which is necessary for subjectivity and more essentially for both individual and social transformation” (88). This enunciation has overwhelming implications for damaged relationships between individuals, communities, nations, and states. What is needed is the embodied act, the processual project, and commitment toward what Oliver calls “the response-ability in subjectivity” (139). The vitality and urgency of Oliver’s directive requires that witnessing be taken to heart, taken into heart and action.

Oliver’s insights concerning the “beyond” of witnessing, recognizing, and “testifying to both something that you have seen with your own eyes and something that you cannot see” and will never see, will be imbricated throughout this project (86). Questioning the limits and dominance of visuality and knowing, Oliver points out that it is “the blinking of the eyes”—the blink, the blank, the loss, the rupture—that “prevents us from seeing what is happening at every instant.” She says that “only a vigilance in investigating our blindness [. . .] keeps us aware of our response-ability” as witness (142). It might be the “beyond” knowing and the “blink” of missed moments and lapses that make us better able to “see” and to know beyond visuality, so that we are essentially gaining knowledge through the sensation of losing it. Countering the “deluge of representation” wherein subjects become “silenced by sight” means reckoning with the “blind spots laced through the visual field” in order that we

might perform witnessing “beyond recognition” (Pollock, Exceptional 9,8; Phelan 1; Oliver 8). “Opening up to the ‘not all’” and partiality “of vision requires patience with blanks, with blindness” and the “humility” of not knowing it all (Phelan 18). The ethical witnessing of “victims of oppression,” Oliver contends, is not primarily centered in “visibility and recognition, but [. . .] witnessing to horrors beyond recognition” (Oliver 8).

Acknowledgement and exploration of loss, failure, absence, and that which otherwise resides and recedes beyond one’s knowing potentially enables “the infinite task of encountering,” and recognition toward “something beyond recognition” which “is at the center of subjectivity” (90). Thinking with Oliver, I will attempt to move beyond remembering as “repetition of trauma” toward ethical witnessing, “elaboration and interpretation” (92). The beyond knowing in witnessing others does not delineate a line to leave uncrossed, but rather is a point of departure for another kind of politics of embodied witnessing. Witnessing the beyond through performance means opening to the “dynamics of [the] blind field[s]” beyond certainty, into performances of active, ethical speculation and inquiry: listening, speaking, and imagining with other subjects (Barthes 57). Performance studies takes “bearing” witness to entail performing witness to “what is beyond knowledge and recognition,” so that stories and lives may continue to live, move, and mean in the world (Oliver 18).

First Rehearsal with the Performance Group Women

I remember pausing for a few minutes before entering the veterans’ rehearsal room for the first time. The sound of the veterans’ voices, energetically singing to the polka-like beat of a piano synthesizer, drifted into and echoed around the cement hallway. Waves of

accumulated on my brow during my hurried walk to the Southern Women’s Museum. Was I presentable? Would I seem too disheveled? With a bag of heavy audio recorder equipment and notebooks slung over one shoulder, and a bouquet of purple flowers filling my other arm, I rested a minute, catching my breath and calming my nerves before entering the room. Rehearsal had already started. I did not want to interrupt them by walking in during a song. I did not know anyone in the group, but someone named co Lien had been alerted that I would be coming. At least I hoped she had gotten the message. What if my rudimentary Vietnamese was not sufficient to explain who I am and why I wanted to attend their rehearsals? What if they didn’t want me to be here? The song’s final chord came to a vigorous, high-pitched close.

I knocked. An old woman with a hunched back and gray hair pulled back in a loose bun opened the door and beckoned me to enter. A group of about twenty-five older women were gathered in a semi-circle around a young man seated in front of a keyboard. Women were sitting and standing, looking over sheet music, and talking together in small clusters. A woman standing near the piano was trying to get everyone’s attention but was having difficulty. Several women talking at the back of the room, closest to the door, looked over at me with surprise and interest. I smiled and nodded. Suddenly four women were standing around me while a fifth woman put her arm around my shoulder and led me into the center of the room toward a chair. Someone took my heavy bag, another handed me a glass of water, while still another woman generously waved her paper fan in my direction. They must have thought I looked pretty tired out from the afternoon sun!

Several women began speaking at once, to me and to each other. They tried speaking to me in French, Vietnamese, and Russian. Everything was happening very quickly. It was

difficult to understand what anyone was saying. I greeted the women with proper speech and a respectful nod of my head, while telling them my name. I mentioned co Lien, and several women called for her across the room. I had created quite a commotion; the rehearsal had been brought to a standstill, but there was no turning back now. I introduced myself to co Lien and explained that I had heard about their group from Professor Phuong. The ladies encircled me and asked all sorts of questions about where I was from, my age, my family, if I was married, how long I had been in Vietnam, and if I studied Vietnamese history. I did the best I could to understand and answer. Some women could not hear the conversation, so I was asked to go to the middle of the room and address the group. Now I was even more nervous. In my field notes I wrote, “I spoke nearly all of the Vietnamese I could muster under the somewhat nerve-wracking circumstances. Luckily the women’s welcoming manner put me at ease.”

They asked why I had come to the rehearsal. I told them I wanted to learn about Vietnamese women’s history, and about the lives of women like them who fought against the French and Americans. I told them I studied performance, culture, and history at a university in the United States. I am here, I said, because I am interested in learning about Vietnamese culture, and women’s history, and asked if I could come to their rehearsals each week and also talk with them about their lives. I am sure my intentions did not come across as clearly as I have just recounted here, but luckily something of substance was conveyed. The women granted me permission to attend their rehearsals. They seemed genuinely interested in talking about their lives. I thanked them for letting me come and handed out flowers to each woman. On that first day, I was instantly struck by their exuberant energy and relaxed friendliness. They were gathered to rehearse for an upcoming performance but the group’s

spontaneous, light-hearted socializing seemed just as important. Their lively comradery seemed to propel their impassioned singing.

To get the rehearsal back on track, the voice teacher gathered everyone around the keyboard and moved to the next song, “Gratitude for Ho Chi Minh” (“Nho On Ho Chi Minh”). Several women brought me into the group and handed me some sheet music, prompting me to sing along. “The song has all the marks of a patriotic anthem,” I write later in my journal. “Repetitious. Catchy. Salutary. I like it.” I try my best to join in, still feeling excited, a little nervous, and a bit overwhelmed, due in good part to my inability to process linguistically all that was happening. As I stumble along, the women belt out the refrain with determination: “Ho Chi Minh gave his life for the people’s struggle.” Most women are singing, but others are still talking in small groups. Their conversations can be heard through the singing. Their laughter glides through the musical rests. A cell phone rings loudly, and a woman scurries over and answers. No one bats an eye. Amidst the other vignettes taking place in the room, several veterans are patiently trying to teach me the song’s verses. “Ho Chi Minh makes his life an example by sacrificing himself to give people world peace.” They hum the verses slowly so I can follow along.

Whenever I hear this particular song, or watch the women perform it, I think about meeting them this first humid, expectant day at the Women’s Museum. I remember crossing the city park (cemetery) thinking about bones buried deep in the nation’s soil, wandering around the museum in search of the women whose voices echoed in the cinderblock stairwell, and suddenly finding myself encircled by a gathering of spry, older ladies, the magnitude of whose life stories I was just beginning to glimpse and imagine. Most of all, I remember feeling tremendously heartened, and relieved, by the immediate kindness and

generosity I received upon first meeting these lively, elegant, unassuming women. Even though I clearly did not belong in their group, and had, in effect, invited myself to their rehearsal, they made me feel welcome.

The tall, thin woman on my left had fine skin, intense eyes, and short, jet-black hair. Something about her looks and walk instantly reminded me of my Auntie Carole. She was a little shy, but still persistent in her desire to talk. She told me her name was co Dinh. She introduced her friend, co Xuan. Co Xuan is a bit shorter than co Dinh with a bright, expressive face and rolling laugh. They patiently talked with me that first day, despite my difficulty in understanding everything they were trying to express. In the coming weeks, co Dinh and co Xuan introduced me to other women in the group, and by the end of the month, they explicitly stated that they would like to help me with my project. Little did I realize then just how much I would come to rely on co Dinh and co Xuan’s generous dedication and insight.

At the end of the first rehearsal, I asked the group if I could bring a friend next time, a young student who could translate between English and Vietnamese, so that I could understand our conversations more deeply. Within a few weeks, Nhina, a former student of Professor Phuong’s at Vietnam National University, and soon to be my invaluable collaborator and close friend, joined me at the veterans’ weekly rehearsals. Nhina agreed to collaborate because she was interested in learning about the veterans’ pasts, as well as in practicing her skills as a translator, earning a little extra money, and learning how to conduct qualitative oral history work. As a young, adventurous, open-minded, thoughtful, and socially engaged woman born after the war, Nhina ended up being the perfect person to work with on this project.

Shortly after Nhina and I began attending the veterans’ rehearsals on a regular basis, the veterans started bringing in pictures and newspaper clippings, telling me and Nhina bits of stories between songs and during short breaks. They described being tracked by police, receiving their prison sentences, losing friends and family members, and their own close brushes with death. After a little over a month of attending rehearsals with the veterans, co Dinh and co Xuan set up my first series of scheduled interviews. What was planned as a couple hours of afternoon conversation became two consecutive six-hour days of back-to- back interviews in which Nhina and I talked with six or seven different women. This was just the beginning. As I listened, I realized how little I knew about their lives, and how much I desired to learn from and to get to know these remarkable women.

In my field notes, recounting those first interviews, I write about speaking with co Son, a striking woman with silver gray hair, and co Thanh, also an older lady in the group, with energetic eyes and endless patriotic devotion. Co Son told a particularly elusive and haunting story. I was never sure if it was an imagined vision, or something that really happened. Either way, upon hearing the story, the image she described has stuck with me. After my conversation with co Son and co Thanh I wrote:

When co Son was talking about prison, and almost being beaten to death, she described seeing the image of a woman. She said she could see or imagine a woman lying down in the road. Dead or near dead. Just lying in the road. As she spoke, I found myself imagining a young Vietnamese woman dressed in traditional white ao dai [Vietnamese national dress for women], her hair long and dark, lying in the busy street in front of the French- styled, yellow and white People’s Committee building in the midst of downtown. The woman is there. In a flowing white ao dai. Almost floating. Dead but alive. [. . .] Co Son said that rather than choosing to live a quiet, more comfortable, non-political life like one of her “beautiful friends,” she felt compelled to fight against the injustice that she was witnessing all around her. She could not get the image of the dead woman out of her mind. She

saw the dead woman lying in the road. This image, she said, motivated her to join the resistance. And this image sustained her when she suffered brutalities in prison. As she spoke, her eyes deepened. She gracefully leaned in closer to me and Nhina. She looked straight at us—almost into us—as she spoke. Serious. Calm. Sad. Strong. But something in her look also seemed to be gazing through us, toward something far away.

As co Son spoke, I glanced over at co Thanh, sitting in a small plastic chair. She was taking deep, rhythmic breaths. She carefully set her wrists on her knees. Fingers touching in a soft point. The shape of a lotus bud. Eyes closed. Back straight. She breathed in and out. Deeply. Making a soft sound with each slow exhale. She is tired, I think, from talking so long. She is concentrating. Calming herself. Gathering her energies. I feel tired too. Tired from just hearing the small partial pieces of story I was able to glean from listening to these women. Tremendous suffering. For years and years. How did they keep gathering and re-gathering their strength during wartime? How did they sustain themselves? How did they survive?

I need to hear more.

I often think about the anonymous “dead woman in the street.” I think of her as I ride down