Why Are They So Afraid of the Lotus? A Series of Open Questions

Edited by: Kim Nguyen, Jeanne Gerrity A conceptual "course packet" of readings around and inspired by the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha. Driven by the central question "What are we learning from artists today?" the second volume of A Series of Open Questions is informed by themes found in the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha, such as cultural hybridization and fluidity of identity, digital and migratory aesthetics, memory and landscape, decentered realities, feminist approaches to storytelling, meditations on death and myth, post-coloniality and decolonization, and women's work as related to cultural politics. The contributions to Why Are They So Afraid of the Lotus? embody Trinh's own weariness around categorization and investigate the ways production can come from and be based in positions of unknowing. What does the promise of “speaking nearby” rather than “speaking about” look like today? What are the politics of hospitality? What are the problematics of “postfeminism,” and how do w