Postcolonial Culture

Postcolonial Culture | Ditmann Laurent Ditmann Spelman College Lditmann@aol.com Postcolonial Culture Panivong Norindr. Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature. Duke University Press, 1996. (197 pages, hardcover $44.95, paperback $16.95) North-American academicians having participated in any major 20th century French studies conference held over the past few years have at least a passing acquaintance with the Dr. Panivong Norindr's ground-breaking examinations. Norindr, now an associate professor ofFrench at the University ofWisconsin-Madison, productively takes postcolonial cultural studies where few others do given Francophone research's current emphasis on North and Sub-Saharan Africa as well, to a lesser extent, as Canada. His analysis bears on the problematic space occupied by colonial Indochina not onlywithin the French psyche, but also in French culture as exemplified by a recent flurry ofnovels and films dealing with this sensitive issue. An interesting condensation and more theoretical formulation ofNorindr's previous explorations, Phantasmatic Indochina skillfully intertwines numerous modalities ofcultural analysis to substantiate his central postulation diat, within the global framework ofcontemporary French culture, "Indochina is a concept at the intersection ofmydi and phantasm, an imaginary structure" (1). In this concise volume, Norindr consummately brings to bear the heavy artillery ofcultural and literary criticism, combining Laplanche and Pontalis' psychoanalytic constructs, Edouard Saïd's fundamental theory, Gayatri Spivak's postcolonial discourse, and various other applications of die critical categories ofrace, class, and gender. Through his introduction, six chapters, and conclusion, Norindr skillfully manipulates the intricacies ofarchitectural, textual, and cinematic analysis, moving with ease and rapidity from one cultural artifact to the next. The fluidity ofhis discussion is actually both the book's most marked quality and its main (yet relative) liability. Given the extreme complexity of the critical apparatus established by Norindr, one cannot help but feel that some crucial considerations should have been given more substance and more support. A briefquotation, a simple endnote or a mere allusion to the oftentimes abstruse intellectual systems so elegandy wielded by the author (especially in the domain ofpost-Freudian psychoanalysis) might leave the less informed reader perplexed or ideologically disoriented. One could also regret the somewhat cavalier attitude Norindr displays towards historical objections to his work. He for instance borrows heavily from the concept ofmemory site (lieu de mémoire), conveniently ignoring—buthe is there in good company these days—that it is the brain-child ofa historian , namely Pierre Nora, not that ofcultural critics. In actual fact, Norindr occasionally (perhaps not often enough) reverts to a quasi-historical discourse, for instance in his discussion of the Lang Son crisis and its effects on French politics. Such passages , however, seem often superficial, as ifhalfhearted. More importably, this reviewer would argue that the book mightbe at times problematic less because ofits speculations, arguments, or theoretical buttressing than due to its somewhat disjointed overall structure. In his acknowledgments, Norindr explains that the book represents the outcome ofseveral research projects, classes or seminars, some sections being already published in avariety ofscholarlyjournals or collections ofarticles (in this respect, the 1996 Cinema, Colonialism, Postcolonialism: Perspectives from the French and Francophone Worldedited by Dina Sherzer is a must-have). Though each section reads well on its own, untrained users might be disconcerted by temporal, thematic, and methodological shifts and jumps from one chapter to the next. Chapter One thus covers die Exposition Coloniale Internationale de Paris, nicely delving on the ways in which the Palais d'Expositions architecture served to display and enclose a French-based, neutralized, reinvented or fantasized Indochinese culture. This is probably Norindr's most cogent analysis, one, however, which would have greadybenefitted from some illustrations. Chapter Two covers the "Unruly Natives," Indochinese students living in France in the 1930s, whose demonstrations first attracted the French public's attention ofto the plight ofnative Asian populations. Chapter Three smartly deconstructs the Surrealists' counter-exhibition and its flawed underlying ideology. Chapter Four addresses André Malraux' archeological and legal tribulations and resulting narrative (or "male fantasy" [72]) La Voie Royalewhile Chapter Five covers Marguerite Duras' - article continues page 63 Vol . 28.3-4 (1998) | 103 Regular Feature | Film Reviews - "Postcolonial Culture" continued from page 103 semi -autobiographic novels, both sections clearly demonstrating perfectmastery oftextual analysis...