Memorialization of Complex Identities in Post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia

This paper examines memorialization of complexity in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Memorial practices mostly focus on memorializing standard sufferings (torture, killing, imprisonment) and victims of mass atrocities. However, in the post Khmer Rouge period, individual survivors and former Khmer Rouge cadres narrate and negotiate their past experiences differently, producing diverse memories of the period and complex identities. There is a significant body of work in memory studies, which deals with the politics of memory, particularly in how memory is used by emerging states to construct collective identities, legitimize power, and consolidate the nations. Although the scholarship has examined the roles of politics in shaping memory and identity, it has not thoroughly considered how complexities of the past are being memorialized. By examining memory projects of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), this paper explores the way in which complexities of memory and identity are being represented and accounted for in the context of post-Khmer Rouge memorialization. By doing so, this paper offer a nuanced view into how memory practices can shed lights on the contemporary politics of memory and identity. More specifically, this paper contributes to the scholarship, which asks the question of simplistic binaries of victim and perpetrator in transitional justice.