Today I want to discuss the term ‘Dordo,’ which is used to refer to Manegacha speakers. I consider it derogatory and want to explain why. This term is local to Rebgong. In addition to Manegacha speakers, it is also used to refer to people who speak a language known in the linguistics literature as Wutun. Speakers call this language Ngandehua, and that’s the name I will use. So, Tibetans in Rebgong call Manegacha- and Ngandehua-speakers Dordo. They refer to both languages as D...or skad དོར་སྐད (language of the Dordo). I avoid the term Dor skad because it erases local linguistic diversity; it conceals the distinction between Manegacha and Ngandehua. So what does Dordo mean? One theory is that the term is derived from a Mongolian general’s name Hor dor rta nag po ཧོར་དོར་རྟ་ནག་པོ, who is sometimes represented as a kind of founding father for Manegacha speakers. I would argue that the original meaning isn’t really important. What matters is contemporary usage. And usage suggests that Dordo means something like, ‘Tibetans (in Rebgong) who are not native Tibetan speakers.’
There’s nothing in the meaning of the word Dordo that makes it offensive. Many Manegacha speakers I asked about it said, “Why should I be offended by it! I am Dordo!”
But it is how, when, and by whom the word is used that make it offensive. The best way to explain this is to draw on the work of Frantz Fanon. In a passage from Black Skins, White Masks, he writes about being noticed on the street - “’Dirty nigger!’ or simply ‘Look! A Negro!’ … the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gesture and attitude, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye.”
He is describing the profoundly disempowering experience of uncontrolled misrecognition. Fanon is not only seen, but also objectified, dominated, trapped in “crushing objecthood.”
The terms of recognition elicit a host of associations that Fanon is suddenly bound to: “battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects.”
This same phenomenon of objectification, domination, and association with negative tropes also applies for Dordo, in a way that is almost always experienced as uncomfortable uncontrolled. For example, a man on the street calls out to a passerby, “Uncle, where are you going?” and the passerby replies, “Me is going over there.” Hearing the slight grammatical gaffe, the reply comes, “Ah, it’s Uncle Dordo.”
A Manegacha speaker arrives late at a banquet with classmates, & the only seat left is the seat of honor. When he sits down, the comment comes, “Ah, that must be the Dordo’s seat.” Laughter. It’s funny because it’s ironic – Dordo don’t get the seat of honor. A Manegacha speaker is working at a site in the mountains, and is sometimes visited by Tibetan herders, who ask him for food. One day he has nothing to share, and the comment comes, “Dam Dordo!”
An accomplished craftsmen sighs, “When we do something good, they call us Tibetans, but if we do anything bad they call us Dordo.”
And time and time again, classmates in middle school argue, until someone says, simply, “Dordo!” spitting the word out, emphasizing each syllable. Or they might say “Dordocho!” meaning ALL you Dordo. All you Dordo are just the same – you’re all as bad as each other. Or they might say “Dordoma,” meaning 'female Dordo', pinning the person at the intersection of two subordinate identities, both female and a Dordo. Most Manegacha speakers I interviewed reported that the most distressing thing about the term was that it alienated them from their sense of belong to a common Tibetan community. Hearing the term made them feel that Dordo ≠ Tibetan. So, from here on in, I will avoid using the term, writing D****o when necessary.
