Affiliation:
1. Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany
Abstract
In genocide, complex political actors can take on changing roles of perpetrator, victim or hero at different points in time. In post-genocide societies, political actors seek to shape memory of the violent past to forward their own interests, often undermining this complexity and painting a more black-and-white picture that ties in with Transitional Justice practitioners’ dichotomous assumptions about perpetrators and victims. This article looks at how complexity is remembered and silenced in a post-genocide memorial space that included many complex political actors during its tenure as a security centre: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia. Here, the audio guide and permanent and temporary exhibitions (as well as changes to these) allow for a co-existence of competing memories, demonising the Khmer Rouge regime for its immense cruelty and simultaneously constructing victimhood for former Khmer Rouge cadres. This could serve as a starting point for discussing complexity, but instead silences in the exhibitions and audio guide create an ambivalence in attributing these roles that masks this complexity.
Subject
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Cultural Studies,Social Psychology
Cited by
6 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献