In this Book
- Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
- Series: Critical Human Rights
summary
Roughly 1.7 million people died in Cambodia from untreated disease, starvation, and execution during the Khmer Rouge reign of less than four years in the late 1970s. The regime’s brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of “enemies of the state” were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable, Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering.
Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists
Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars
Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists
Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-vi
- List of Illustrations
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-2
- 1. The Making of Records
- pp. 26-60
- 2. The Making of Archives
- pp. 61-96
- 3. The Making of Narratives
- pp. 97-135
- 4. The Making of Commodities
- pp. 136-156
- Bibliography
- pp. 201-214
- Further Reading
- p. 233
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299297534
Related ISBN(s)
9780299297541
MARC Record
OCLC
871258137
Pages
245
Launched on MUSE
2014-04-15
Language
English
Open Access
No