In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

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...

Share