Elsewhere, Within Here ─ Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event

World-renowned filmmaker and feminist, postcolonial thinker Trinh T. Minh-ha is one of the most powerful and articulate voices in both independent filmmaking and cultural politics.
Elsewhere, Within Here is an engaging look at travel across national borders--as a foreigner, a tourist, an immigrant, a refugee—in a pre- and post-9/11 world. Who is welcome where? What does it mean to feel out of place in the country you call home? When does the stranger appear in these times of dark metamorphoses? These are some of the issues addressed by the author as she examines the cultural meaning and complexities of travel, immigration, home and exile. The boundary, seen both as a material and immaterial event, is where endings pass into beginnings. Building upon themes present in her earlier work on hybridity and displacement in the median passage, and illuminating the ways in which "every voyage can be said to involve a re-siting of boundaries," Trinh T. Minh-ha leads her readers through an investigation of what it means to be an insider and an outsider in this "epoch of global fear."
Elsewhere, Within Here is essential reading for those interested in contemporary feminist thought and postcolonial studies.


Trinh T. Minh-ha is Professor of Rhetoric and of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. A leading feminist theorist, award-winning filmmaker, visual artist, writer, composer, cultural critic, she is the author of several influential and highly regarded books, including When the Moon Waxes Red, Framer Framed, Cinema-Interval, and The Digital Film Event, all published by Routledge.

Trinh T. Minh-Hais Professor of Rhetoric and of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a leading feminist theorist, award-winning filmmaker, media artist, writer, composer, and cultural critic, and author of several influential and highly regarded books. She is particularly regarded for her work as a feminist and for the explorations of postcoloniality in her work. Her website is http://www.trinhminh-ha.com/.

Foreignness and The New Color of Fear
Story of the Wall
The Wall Event
The Call of The Tricolor Flag

I. Home: The Traveling Source

1. Far Away, From Home: The Comma Between
Sleepless Silence
The Tea and The Tear
The Debt of Love
Man of Tea
Children of Dragons and Immortals
The Century of Forgiveness?

2. Other Than Myself, My Other Self
Traveling Tales
A Stranger in a Strange Country
Wanderers Across Language
Their Country Is My Country
The Blue Frog
I, The Mis-seer

II. Boundary Event: Between Refuse and Refuge

3. An Acoustic Journey
Midway to Nowhere
"You Are The Battleground"
A Matter of Tuning

4. Nature's r: A Musical Swoon
Looking Back to The City of The Future
Boundary Event
Nature’s Becoming
Twilight Gray, Middle Gray
The Faded Charm of The Wolf

5. Voice Over I
Air (Your Tongue)
Earth (Your Lips)
Water (Your Saliva)
Light (The Way You Move)

6. The Paint of Music. A Performance Across Cultures
Essence – Performance
A Musical Accuracy
A Moment In and Out of Time
An Artless Balance
Making Music with Painting

III. No End in Sight

7. Mother's Talk
Stupidity and Memory
Wisdom and Memory
Wisdom’s Gender
Talk, More (Than) Talk
Tale Telling and The Texture of Memory

8. White Spring
The Page Screen
Red and Black: Voices of The Rain
Speaking Blind Through Camera Window
Death’s Voyeur: The All-in-One Diseuse

9. Detroit:
Incarcerated and Disappeared in The Land of The Free