‘Here was the place’: (Re)Performing Khmer Rouge Archives of Violence

Abstract

This chapter takes the distinction made by Diana Taylor between archive and repertoire as the basis for considering both the performative aspects of how archives are given affective presence at memorial sites, and the distinction between such presence and that which is generated by more conventional performance-based representation. Taylor, in The Archive and the Repertoire, make a distinction between material and ephemeral expressions of historical and cultural narratives and argues for the importance of the repertoire as a foil for the hegemonic power of the archive. As Derrida points out in Archive Fever, archives are necessarily conservative: they require a dwelling within which their claim on history is classified and put into order — it is institutionalized (4). The archive asserts cultural and historical legitimacy precisely because of the materiality of its evidence. ‘The repertoire, on the other hand, enacts embodied memory: performance, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing — in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral nonreproducible knowledge’ (20). The enquiry of this chapter is located in the context of remembering the genocide that took place in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime (1975–79). Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh, formerly a Khmer Rouge prison called ‘S21’, and nearby Choeung Ek (‘The Killing Fields’) are the principal sites of genocide remembrance popularly visited by tourists.

The face looks at me and calls to me. It lays claim to me. What does it ask? Not to leave it alone. An answer: here I am.

Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be? 127