Didi-Huberman says, "lanzman thinks that no image is capable of "saying" that history, which is why he tirelessly films the witnesses' speech. Godard thinks that henceforth all images will speak to us only of that history (but to say that "they speak of it" does not mean that they "say it", which is why he tirelessly reexamines our entire visual culture in light of this question......They boldly mix the historical archive--which is omnipresent--with the artistic repertoire of world cinema. they show a lot, they make a montage of everything with everything. so a certain suspicion arises: the suspicion that they are lying about everything."

this reminds me of Minh-ha's narration of Reassemblage when she says something to the effect that she doesn't intend to speak about the people but rather, to speak near by the people. the ethnographic context of that documentary (if we can agree to classify at all) is the discourse of the other and the impossibility of understanding the other, which inherently is our inability to represent other. given that thought, how is it that the process transcends the inability of the medium? why is the process less problematic than the representation itself? can ethics be a medium?