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Conclusion: The Archival Performance of Human Rights and the Ethics of Looking
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157 Con clu sion The Archi val Per for mance of Human Rights and the Eth ics of Look ing Re mem ber ing is an eth i cal act, has eth i cal value in and of it self. Mem ory is, ach ingly, the only re la tion we can have with the dead. Susan Son tag, Re gard ing the Pain of Oth ers Trac ing the so cial life of Khmer Rouge mug shots un cov ers mo ments of si lence and acts of si lenc ing as the photo graphs were created, trans formed into archives, and ac ti vated by sur vi vors and by victims’ fam ily mem bers as they craft nar ra tives about the re gime. Through these var i ous ac ti va tions, the mug shots en able Cam bo dians and the inter na tional com mu nity to bear wit ness to the Khmer Rouge’s crimes and make pow er ful vis ual tes ta ments that they will not stand idly by as such vi o lence is per pet u ated. Any in ves ti ga tion of the so cial life of records must begin with the con text of their crea tion. The or i gins of the Tuol Sleng mug shots rest in French co lo nial po lic ing strat e gies that em ployed photog ra phy to dis cur sively trans form sus pects into crim i nal bod ies. The co lo nial im pulse to clas sify foreign bod ies was turned in ward in the crea tion and adop tion of the Ber til lon system in France and then turned out ward once again in the ad ap ta tion of the Ber til lon system in French col o nies through out the world, in clud ing Cam bo dia. Khmer Rouge bu reau crats then adopted and adapted the for mat of their co lo nial 158 C o n c l u s i o n pre de ces sors by im ple ment ing the use of stan dard ized photog ra phy at Tuol Sleng with the hope of creat ing a mod ern and ef fi cient bu reau cracy at the prison. The mug shots, to gether with other Tuol Sleng records, al lowed of fi cials to com part men tal ize labor, al ien ated bu reau crats from the vi o lent con se quences of their ac tions, and en cour aged a cul ture of thought less ness at the prison. The Tuol Sleng mug shots not only doc u mented the op pres sion of pris on ers but served a key so cial func tion within that op pres sion. The records were not neu tral by-products of ac tiv ity (as clas si cal West ern archi val the ory would posit) but an in te gral part of that ac tiv ity; they made the in car cer a tion, tor ture, and mur der pos sible. Al though archi val theo rists have re cently tried both to un cover the voices of the op pressed in the records of the op pres sor and to re frame the sub jects of photo graphs as co-creators, these claims deny both the ab so lute to tal i tar ian en vi ron ment of Tuol Sleng, where re sis tance was im pos sible, and the dis cur sive power of records crea tion to trans form those ar rested into en e mies of the state. Be cause of both the trans for ma tive power of the crea tion of these mug shots and the com plete op pres sive ness of Tuol Sleng as a total in sti tu tion within a to tal i tar ian state, there are no whis pers of the vic tims in these records; the photo graphs, like the dead they de pict, re main frus trat ingly si lent. While post co lo nial theo rists de bate whether the sub al tern can speak, most of us agree that the dead can not. While we pro ject our own voices onto these photo graphs (in the vein of W. J. T. Mitch ell) in the face of this si lence, we must admit that it con veys a false sense of agency...