Impassable Visions: The Cambodia to Come, the Detritus in its Wake

TY - CHAP

T1 - Impassable Visions

T2 - The Cambodia to Come, the Detritus in its Wake

AU - McFann, Hudson

AU - Hinton, Alexander Laban

PY - 2018/4/27

Y1 - 2018/4/27

N2 - In April 1975 the Khmer Rouge embarked on a radical campaign to remake Cambodia, one that, in under four years, claimed the lives of approximately 2 million people. We take a critical genocide studies perspective to examine this mass death, arguing that a key dynamic driving the violence was an "impassability." If the revolutionary society was "to come," to borrow Derrida's phrase, the aspiration contained the seeds of its own undoing: the detritus - from the physical garbage of the old regime to its corrupt traditions to the contaminating incorrigibles - needed to constitute the imagined pure state to which it was opposed. First, we discuss how the genocide unfolded, focusing on a postwar campaign to "clean up" war refuse. Second, we examine how this effort to eliminate detritus persisted, albeit in changing form, throughout the Khmer Rouge period. Finally, we analyze the role of Khmer Rouge prisons in constituting enemies as "garbage."

AB - In April 1975 the Khmer Rouge embarked on a radical campaign to remake Cambodia, one that, in under four years, claimed the lives of approximately 2 million people. We take a critical genocide studies perspective to examine this mass death, arguing that a key dynamic driving the violence was an "impassability." If the revolutionary society was "to come," to borrow Derrida's phrase, the aspiration contained the seeds of its own undoing: the detritus - from the physical garbage of the old regime to its corrupt traditions to the contaminating incorrigibles - needed to constitute the imagined pure state to which it was opposed. First, we discuss how the genocide unfolded, focusing on a postwar campaign to "clean up" war refuse. Second, we examine how this effort to eliminate detritus persisted, albeit in changing form, throughout the Khmer Rouge period. Finally, we analyze the role of Khmer Rouge prisons in constituting enemies as "garbage."

KW - Anthropology of genocide

KW - Cambodia

KW - Critical genocide studies

KW - Dehumanization

KW - Discard studies

KW - Hauntology

KW - Khmer Rouge

KW - Nationalism

KW - Political violence

KW - Waste

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049700438&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85049700438&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119222422.ch16

DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119222422.ch16

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9781119222293

SP - 223

EP - 235

BT - A Companion to the Anthropology of Death

PB - Wiley-Blackwell

ER -