Memory construction of former Khmer Rouge cadres: resistance to dominant discourses of genocide in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

In the context of post-genocide Cambodia, this article explores resistance as the product of knowledge derived from the entanglement of official and personal memories of the Khmer Rouge (KR) period. By examining two public exhibitions produced by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), namely, Forced Transfers: The Second Evacuation of the Khmer Rouge Regime and Life Experiences of Former Khmer Rouge Cadres, the article argues that narratives of the KR period as portrayed by the exhibits have the potential to destabilize official narratives by disrupting the homogeneity of dominant narratives and challenging reductive dichotomies of victim and perpetrator.

KEYWORDS:

• Resistance
• memorialization
• narrative
• DC-Cam
• Cambodia

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my research participants and to the staff at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) for their insights, guidance, and assistance. My thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and to the members of the PoReSo research group for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest in regard to this article.

Notes

1. See further on YFP and DC-Cam’s memory initiatives http://www.yfpcambodia.org/index.php?p = home.php&menuId = 1&menuf = 1 and http://dccam.org/home (accessed 27 January 2020).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper is funded in part by the Open Society Foundations’ Civil Society Scholar Award (Grant Number IN2018-45487).

Notes on contributors

Savina Sirik

Savina Sirik is a doctoral student in Peace and Development Research in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests include memory, memorialization, narrative construction, complex victims, and resistance.