This article examines how a recent multi-media requiem sought rest for Khmer Rouge victims and co... more This article examines how a recent multi-media requiem sought rest for Khmer Rouge victims and connected audiences in the Cambodian post-conflict diaspora. Composed by Him Sophy, the requiem takes its name from a funeral ritual that assists re-birth: Bangsokol. Performed in various international cities throughout the years 2017–2019, Bangsokol, with a libretto by researcher Trent Walker, combined chanting and singing in Khmer and Pali with the music of a traditional Cambodian orchestra blended with that of a Western chamber orchestra. The performance was backlit by projected film images by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, and accompanied by stage performance elements such as procession, drumming, and dance. I draw on interviews with the key creatives involved in the Bangsokol Requiem, visual documentation of the Requiem in development, and experiences of its premiere performances at the Melbourne Festival in October 2017. I follow Elizabeth Grosz on art to consider the Requiem in terms of its capacity for ‘activation’ and trace three of its micropolitical ‘alter-accomplishments’. I argue that the performances deterritorialised existing memorial refrains and reconnected diasporic and wider audiences through an experience of affective intensification.
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice (Burgis-Kasthala, 2020), especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in interna... more This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in internationalised criminal justice processes such as hybrid tribunals. Scale discourses—producing specific notions of “the international” and “the local”—are so naturalised in these endeavours that their regressive effects remain unacknowledged. Following Annelise Riles’ ground-breaking analysis of the politics of scale in colonial law, and feminist critiques of scale discourse in accounts of globalisation and conflict, we think critically about “the international” and “the local” in a postcolonial and post-conflict justice context. Using the case of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), we specifically examine the operation and effects of discourses of “international standards” and “local ownership”. We argue that denaturalising scale in international criminal justice would serve a wider project to decolonise international law and address the specific forms of disenfranchisement currently enacted by dominant “scales of justice”.
There has been increasing use of project-based organization in various areas of human rights prac... more There has been increasing use of project-based organization in various areas of human rights practice, including within truth and justice-seeking in the wake of mass atrocities. This article traces the development and deployment of project-based approaches to judicial reparation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), an internationalized (hybrid) criminal tribunal. Drawing on the authors’ many years of close observation in and around the ECCC, it describes and explains how a project-based approach responded to the challenge of ‘moral and collective’ reparation for victims of mass crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979). The article critically examines how development actors nominated, designed and ‘delivered’ so-called ‘reparation projects’. Twenty-four projects were ultimately recognized by the ECCC; key details of these are succinctly tabulated here for the benefit of readers. The article discusses the effects of the projectification of ECCC reparation, including new practices, changed relationships and changed meanings of reparation. It finds that in Cambodia—a state that has experienced decades of international development assistance resulting in the entrenchment of project forms across different fields—the mobilization of new actors and resources has expanded the possibilities for ECCC reparation and provided some benefits to those victims involved. However, a project-based approach also reshaped decision-making and accountability structures underpinning reparation work. The article argues that using ‘projectification’ as an analytical lens expands our capacity to understand how, and with what consequences, global notions of reparation and justice are enacted in different contexts through the coordination and implementation of projects.
In April 1979, a mission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers made a solidarity... more In April 1979, a mission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers made a solidarity visit to Cambodia in the immediate aftermath of Khmer Rouge rule of the country. One of the mission members, John H. E. Fried, a former advisor to the United States’ military trials at Nuremberg, was moved to subsequently advocate for United Nations recognition of the then ostracised Cambodian state. The crisis of post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and the political justifications made by early visitors there, illuminate late Cold War cultures of progressive international law scholarship and activism through their constitutive affects and material practices. While legal investigation of Khmer Rouge crimes is now largely understood through the frame of ‘transitional justice’, this paper rejects such a framing. It argues instead for attention to Cambodia’s early experiences, in which left legal activism – calling for Nuremberg’s lessons to be applied to the violence perpetrated in Vietnam and Cambodia – played an important role. For scholars interested in post-1979 Cambodia, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum historical visitor books, recently digitised, promise insight into the multiple actors, motivations and understandings of international ‘early responders’ to evidence of Khmer Rouge crimes.
This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion that was held in Melbourne in December... more This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion that was held in Melbourne in December 2017. The panel comprised four speakers, each with significant professional experience working at Cambodia’s hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This panel was the first time such key insiders have come together outside of Cambodia and in an academic context to reflect on more than ten years of the Court’s operation and their personal experiences there. There is much to be gained by enquiring into the lived experiences of those working at internationalised tribunals. In this article, unique insights are shared in relation to: ECCC prosecution and the Court’s legacy of historical and procedural record, the Court’s establishment and outreach, the legal representation of ECCC participating victims (civil parties), and supporting witnesses across different cultural and legal contexts.
This article examines victim participation at Cambodia's hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chamb... more This article examines victim participation at Cambodia's hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The tribunal — which attempts to bring former Khmer Rouge to justice for crimes committed between 1975 and 1979 — has invited significant participation by 'victims' and has provoked new public debate about the past, ongoing suffering and reparation. The participation of collectives of victims, and the collective nature of their participation, are here considered as interventions in the immanent utopic processes of the ECCC. These interventions produce new claims for reparation, claims that exceed extant human rights discourses in Cambodia and confront dominant economic and socio-political conditions.
It is often argued that the most commonly assumed visual mode in geopolitics is the objective and... more It is often argued that the most commonly assumed visual mode in geopolitics is the objective and disembodied gaze of the master geopolitical tactician. This is a charge that has been levelled at both geopolitical figures such as national leaders, and at academics who write about historical and present-day geopolitics. However, recent work has diversified the way in which formal, practical and popular geopolitical visions may be examined in critical geopolitical studies. Such work calls for greater attention to be paid to popular visual cultures and to geopolitical practice as a way of envisioning global space that is embodied and subjective.
This book outlines a geographically-informed method of evaluating the emotional impact of museum ... more This book outlines a geographically-informed method of evaluating the emotional impact of museum exhibits. The authors have personally developed the method they describe over several years of working with the Museo Laboratorio della Mente in Rome and the Melbourne Museum in Australia. Informed by non-representational theories in cultural geography, this book offers solutions to museum staff for how they might evaluate aspects of visitor experience, such as emotions and embodied experience, which can be very difficult to assess using conventional approaches.
This thesis examines the relationship between place, memory and geopolitics. It examines public m... more This thesis examines the relationship between place, memory and geopolitics. It examines public memorial sites in Cambodia dedicated to the victims of the genocide of 1975 to 1979. Scant attention has been paid to the geographies of Cambodia’s post-1979 reconstruction period. Where commentators have noted the existence of Cambodia’s dedicated spaces of memory they have characterised these sites as culturally and politically inauthentic or marginal (as ersatz religious monuments, or as political ‘propaganda’). Against these accounts, I contend that Cambodia’s memorials are central to, and productive of, cultural, national and transnational politics of the past and present. Like many other late twentieth-century contexts, the Cambodian case demonstrates the link between the texts and practices of geopolitics and discourses of traumatic memory. The dissertation examines how various tropes of memory enact an imaginative topography of Cambodia, both locally and transnationally. Four memorial sites and practices are analysed: the development of the Choeung Ek ‘killing field’ site (Phnom Penh); tourism to Cambodia’s genocide sites as a popular geopolitical practice; and the global circulation and reception of photographs of Khmer Rouge victims. I argue that these sites and practices of memory have been central to Cambodia’s redevelopment as well as constitutive of the geopolitics of Cambodia’s e-entry into an international state system.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes, 2024
This chapter introduces the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) historical visitor books as a sourc... more This chapter introduces the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) historical visitor books as a source, and traces three consequential witnesses from their comments in the earliest visitor book to their actions beyond Cambodia. Visitors to TSGM came not only from socialist states, as the cases offered here – of a French jurist, a US diplomat, and a Japanese survivor – illustrate. I argue that the early visitor books are a rich and rewarding archive that can reveal much about the social and political life of the museum. They also offer insight into what was done, or indeed not done, internationally to assist the People's Republic of Kampuchea in the aftermath of Khmer Rouge rule.
International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (second edition) A. Kobayashi (Ed), 2019
Critiques of the concept and practice of “transitional justice” have been mounted from both insid... more Critiques of the concept and practice of “transitional justice” have been mounted from both inside and outside the “transitional justice” field. Particular attention is here directed to the geography of knowledge production within the field, and to the oftentimes developmentalist basis of “transitional justice” practice. While recent edited collections and articles have provided more rigorous theorisations of both the “transitional” and “justice” elements of the concept, further opportunities exist for critical conceptual development. Geographical understandings of processes of localization, democratization and liberalization, and geographical theorizations of legal spaces and the politics of scale have much to offer the vibrant and important contexts identified with “transitional justice”.
Civil Society and Transitional Justice in Asia and the Pacific, 2019
This paper examines out the particular role of the civil society organisation known as the Bophan... more This paper examines out the particular role of the civil society organisation known as the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre, an audio-visual resource centre in Cambodia, in the legal outreach work of Cambodia's internationalised criminal tribunal. The Bophana Centre was co-founded by Cambodian-born and French-educated filmmaker Rithy Panh in 2006. Particular attention is paid to Bophana’s co-development of films that have been shown to legal outreach audiences across the country, as well as to the material assistance offered to the ECCC Public Affairs Section in showing such films. A preliminary account of Bophana's Khmer Rouge History 'App' (launched in mid-2017), formally recognised by the ECCC as a reparation project, is also given. Links between Panh's and Bophana’s work are critically examined in the context of Cambodian public memory of the Khmer Rouge period both prior to, and as an integral part of, the current tribunal.
This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as ... more This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a criminal tribunal held in Cambodia with international assistance. Fully operational since 2007, the ECCC tries ‘senior leaders’ and those most responsible for serious crimes committed in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. These dates refer to the infamous historical period of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, being the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge during their nearly four-year rule. In this chapter we set out the rationale and legal functioning of the tribunal, before turning to a discussion of the politics and geopolitics of the initial negotiation of the tribunal, as well as its progress to date. Following this, we comment on the historic role played by victims in this legal process – a world first in tribunals of this kind – finishing with a discussion of reparations measures and the contested social and political legacy of the ECCC.
Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Development, 2017
This chapter explores recent developments in internationalised legal accountability in southeast ... more This chapter explores recent developments in internationalised legal accountability in southeast Asia, with a focus on Cambodia and East Timor. Justice for victims of the mass political violence of the 1970s (and beyond) in these countries has recently been sought through internationalised legal and socio-legal processes. The chapter argues that there is an urgent need to understand these processes as key political and cultural events and, as such, to enquire into their material and discursive effects in relation to wider development processes and social and political change. The chapter considers these recent justice processes in relation to the United Nations-supported interventions in both countries, and their subsequent post-conflict periods. Last, the chapter reflects on recent opportunities for dialogue, memorialisation and reparation in Cambodia and East Timor.
This article examines how a recent multi-media requiem sought rest for Khmer Rouge victims and co... more This article examines how a recent multi-media requiem sought rest for Khmer Rouge victims and connected audiences in the Cambodian post-conflict diaspora. Composed by Him Sophy, the requiem takes its name from a funeral ritual that assists re-birth: Bangsokol. Performed in various international cities throughout the years 2017–2019, Bangsokol, with a libretto by researcher Trent Walker, combined chanting and singing in Khmer and Pali with the music of a traditional Cambodian orchestra blended with that of a Western chamber orchestra. The performance was backlit by projected film images by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, and accompanied by stage performance elements such as procession, drumming, and dance. I draw on interviews with the key creatives involved in the Bangsokol Requiem, visual documentation of the Requiem in development, and experiences of its premiere performances at the Melbourne Festival in October 2017. I follow Elizabeth Grosz on art to consider the Requiem in terms of its capacity for ‘activation’ and trace three of its micropolitical ‘alter-accomplishments’. I argue that the performances deterritorialised existing memorial refrains and reconnected diasporic and wider audiences through an experience of affective intensification.
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice (Burgis-Kasthala, 2020), especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in interna... more This paper argues that a politics of scale plays a fundamental but uninterrogated role in internationalised criminal justice processes such as hybrid tribunals. Scale discourses—producing specific notions of “the international” and “the local”—are so naturalised in these endeavours that their regressive effects remain unacknowledged. Following Annelise Riles’ ground-breaking analysis of the politics of scale in colonial law, and feminist critiques of scale discourse in accounts of globalisation and conflict, we think critically about “the international” and “the local” in a postcolonial and post-conflict justice context. Using the case of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), we specifically examine the operation and effects of discourses of “international standards” and “local ownership”. We argue that denaturalising scale in international criminal justice would serve a wider project to decolonise international law and address the specific forms of disenfranchisement currently enacted by dominant “scales of justice”.
There has been increasing use of project-based organization in various areas of human rights prac... more There has been increasing use of project-based organization in various areas of human rights practice, including within truth and justice-seeking in the wake of mass atrocities. This article traces the development and deployment of project-based approaches to judicial reparation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), an internationalized (hybrid) criminal tribunal. Drawing on the authors’ many years of close observation in and around the ECCC, it describes and explains how a project-based approach responded to the challenge of ‘moral and collective’ reparation for victims of mass crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979). The article critically examines how development actors nominated, designed and ‘delivered’ so-called ‘reparation projects’. Twenty-four projects were ultimately recognized by the ECCC; key details of these are succinctly tabulated here for the benefit of readers. The article discusses the effects of the projectification of ECCC reparation, including new practices, changed relationships and changed meanings of reparation. It finds that in Cambodia—a state that has experienced decades of international development assistance resulting in the entrenchment of project forms across different fields—the mobilization of new actors and resources has expanded the possibilities for ECCC reparation and provided some benefits to those victims involved. However, a project-based approach also reshaped decision-making and accountability structures underpinning reparation work. The article argues that using ‘projectification’ as an analytical lens expands our capacity to understand how, and with what consequences, global notions of reparation and justice are enacted in different contexts through the coordination and implementation of projects.
In April 1979, a mission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers made a solidarity... more In April 1979, a mission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers made a solidarity visit to Cambodia in the immediate aftermath of Khmer Rouge rule of the country. One of the mission members, John H. E. Fried, a former advisor to the United States’ military trials at Nuremberg, was moved to subsequently advocate for United Nations recognition of the then ostracised Cambodian state. The crisis of post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and the political justifications made by early visitors there, illuminate late Cold War cultures of progressive international law scholarship and activism through their constitutive affects and material practices. While legal investigation of Khmer Rouge crimes is now largely understood through the frame of ‘transitional justice’, this paper rejects such a framing. It argues instead for attention to Cambodia’s early experiences, in which left legal activism – calling for Nuremberg’s lessons to be applied to the violence perpetrated in Vietnam and Cambodia – played an important role. For scholars interested in post-1979 Cambodia, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum historical visitor books, recently digitised, promise insight into the multiple actors, motivations and understandings of international ‘early responders’ to evidence of Khmer Rouge crimes.
This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion that was held in Melbourne in December... more This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion that was held in Melbourne in December 2017. The panel comprised four speakers, each with significant professional experience working at Cambodia’s hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This panel was the first time such key insiders have come together outside of Cambodia and in an academic context to reflect on more than ten years of the Court’s operation and their personal experiences there. There is much to be gained by enquiring into the lived experiences of those working at internationalised tribunals. In this article, unique insights are shared in relation to: ECCC prosecution and the Court’s legacy of historical and procedural record, the Court’s establishment and outreach, the legal representation of ECCC participating victims (civil parties), and supporting witnesses across different cultural and legal contexts.
This article examines victim participation at Cambodia's hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chamb... more This article examines victim participation at Cambodia's hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The tribunal — which attempts to bring former Khmer Rouge to justice for crimes committed between 1975 and 1979 — has invited significant participation by 'victims' and has provoked new public debate about the past, ongoing suffering and reparation. The participation of collectives of victims, and the collective nature of their participation, are here considered as interventions in the immanent utopic processes of the ECCC. These interventions produce new claims for reparation, claims that exceed extant human rights discourses in Cambodia and confront dominant economic and socio-political conditions.
It is often argued that the most commonly assumed visual mode in geopolitics is the objective and... more It is often argued that the most commonly assumed visual mode in geopolitics is the objective and disembodied gaze of the master geopolitical tactician. This is a charge that has been levelled at both geopolitical figures such as national leaders, and at academics who write about historical and present-day geopolitics. However, recent work has diversified the way in which formal, practical and popular geopolitical visions may be examined in critical geopolitical studies. Such work calls for greater attention to be paid to popular visual cultures and to geopolitical practice as a way of envisioning global space that is embodied and subjective.
This book outlines a geographically-informed method of evaluating the emotional impact of museum ... more This book outlines a geographically-informed method of evaluating the emotional impact of museum exhibits. The authors have personally developed the method they describe over several years of working with the Museo Laboratorio della Mente in Rome and the Melbourne Museum in Australia. Informed by non-representational theories in cultural geography, this book offers solutions to museum staff for how they might evaluate aspects of visitor experience, such as emotions and embodied experience, which can be very difficult to assess using conventional approaches.
This thesis examines the relationship between place, memory and geopolitics. It examines public m... more This thesis examines the relationship between place, memory and geopolitics. It examines public memorial sites in Cambodia dedicated to the victims of the genocide of 1975 to 1979. Scant attention has been paid to the geographies of Cambodia’s post-1979 reconstruction period. Where commentators have noted the existence of Cambodia’s dedicated spaces of memory they have characterised these sites as culturally and politically inauthentic or marginal (as ersatz religious monuments, or as political ‘propaganda’). Against these accounts, I contend that Cambodia’s memorials are central to, and productive of, cultural, national and transnational politics of the past and present. Like many other late twentieth-century contexts, the Cambodian case demonstrates the link between the texts and practices of geopolitics and discourses of traumatic memory. The dissertation examines how various tropes of memory enact an imaginative topography of Cambodia, both locally and transnationally. Four memorial sites and practices are analysed: the development of the Choeung Ek ‘killing field’ site (Phnom Penh); tourism to Cambodia’s genocide sites as a popular geopolitical practice; and the global circulation and reception of photographs of Khmer Rouge victims. I argue that these sites and practices of memory have been central to Cambodia’s redevelopment as well as constitutive of the geopolitics of Cambodia’s e-entry into an international state system.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes, 2024
This chapter introduces the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) historical visitor books as a sourc... more This chapter introduces the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) historical visitor books as a source, and traces three consequential witnesses from their comments in the earliest visitor book to their actions beyond Cambodia. Visitors to TSGM came not only from socialist states, as the cases offered here – of a French jurist, a US diplomat, and a Japanese survivor – illustrate. I argue that the early visitor books are a rich and rewarding archive that can reveal much about the social and political life of the museum. They also offer insight into what was done, or indeed not done, internationally to assist the People's Republic of Kampuchea in the aftermath of Khmer Rouge rule.
International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (second edition) A. Kobayashi (Ed), 2019
Critiques of the concept and practice of “transitional justice” have been mounted from both insid... more Critiques of the concept and practice of “transitional justice” have been mounted from both inside and outside the “transitional justice” field. Particular attention is here directed to the geography of knowledge production within the field, and to the oftentimes developmentalist basis of “transitional justice” practice. While recent edited collections and articles have provided more rigorous theorisations of both the “transitional” and “justice” elements of the concept, further opportunities exist for critical conceptual development. Geographical understandings of processes of localization, democratization and liberalization, and geographical theorizations of legal spaces and the politics of scale have much to offer the vibrant and important contexts identified with “transitional justice”.
Civil Society and Transitional Justice in Asia and the Pacific, 2019
This paper examines out the particular role of the civil society organisation known as the Bophan... more This paper examines out the particular role of the civil society organisation known as the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre, an audio-visual resource centre in Cambodia, in the legal outreach work of Cambodia's internationalised criminal tribunal. The Bophana Centre was co-founded by Cambodian-born and French-educated filmmaker Rithy Panh in 2006. Particular attention is paid to Bophana’s co-development of films that have been shown to legal outreach audiences across the country, as well as to the material assistance offered to the ECCC Public Affairs Section in showing such films. A preliminary account of Bophana's Khmer Rouge History 'App' (launched in mid-2017), formally recognised by the ECCC as a reparation project, is also given. Links between Panh's and Bophana’s work are critically examined in the context of Cambodian public memory of the Khmer Rouge period both prior to, and as an integral part of, the current tribunal.
This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as ... more This chapter concerns the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a criminal tribunal held in Cambodia with international assistance. Fully operational since 2007, the ECCC tries ‘senior leaders’ and those most responsible for serious crimes committed in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. These dates refer to the infamous historical period of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, being the name given to the country by the Khmer Rouge during their nearly four-year rule. In this chapter we set out the rationale and legal functioning of the tribunal, before turning to a discussion of the politics and geopolitics of the initial negotiation of the tribunal, as well as its progress to date. Following this, we comment on the historic role played by victims in this legal process – a world first in tribunals of this kind – finishing with a discussion of reparations measures and the contested social and political legacy of the ECCC.
Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian Development, 2017
This chapter explores recent developments in internationalised legal accountability in southeast ... more This chapter explores recent developments in internationalised legal accountability in southeast Asia, with a focus on Cambodia and East Timor. Justice for victims of the mass political violence of the 1970s (and beyond) in these countries has recently been sought through internationalised legal and socio-legal processes. The chapter argues that there is an urgent need to understand these processes as key political and cultural events and, as such, to enquire into their material and discursive effects in relation to wider development processes and social and political change. The chapter considers these recent justice processes in relation to the United Nations-supported interventions in both countries, and their subsequent post-conflict periods. Last, the chapter reflects on recent opportunities for dialogue, memorialisation and reparation in Cambodia and East Timor.
Opinio Juris (Symposium on the ECCC) http://opiniojuris.org/2022/11/01/symposium-on-the-eccc-extraordinary-experiments-in-reparation, 2022
When the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) ren... more When the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) rendered the court’s last judgment on 22 September 2022, it made only scant reference to the 13 collective reparations projects that had been recognised by the Trial Chamber for the benefit of participating victims (civil parties) in Case 002/02. While these reparations were not under appeal, they represent perhaps one of the most interesting features of the Khmer Rouge trials.
The Lead Co-Lawyers representing victims at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ... more The Lead Co-Lawyers representing victims at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, have recently submitted a filing on the question of the reclassification of case file documents. The reclassification of documents was slated for consideration at the end of ECCC Case 002, but victims’ lawyers have good reason to try to bring forward the process given that victims’ rights are currently at risk. As Pich Ang and Megan Hirst state in the filing to the ECCC Supreme Court Chamber (SCC) for directions on the matter, how documents in Case 002 are to be reclassified will indicate much about what kind of legacy this long-running tribunal is likely to bequeath...
A review of Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian's (Eds) Race, Nature, and the Polit... more A review of Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian's (Eds) Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference (Duke University Press, Durham, 2003).
Summary report of research conducted at the Museum of the Mind in Rome. Please cite as follows: ... more Summary report of research conducted at the Museum of the Mind in Rome. Please cite as follows: Boyd, C.P., Hughes, R., Demichelis, C., Martelli, P., Parr, H., & Bennett, S. (2016). The Museo Laboratorio della Menta: Drawings of the 'Visitor Experience' - Project Report. Available from URL: https://www.academia.edu/25362088/The_Museo_Laboratorio_della_Menta_Drawings_of_the_visitor_experience. For more details on the work of the museum see the following website: http://www.museodellamente.it/en/
Shading Liveable Cities: exploring the ecological,
financial and regulatory dimensions of the urb... more Shading Liveable Cities: exploring the ecological, financial and regulatory dimensions of the urban tree canopy. Dr Nicole Cook, Dr Rachel Hughes, Dr Elizabeth Taylor, Dr Stephen Livesley & Dr Melanie Davern. Working Paper 1 October 2015. Provision of shade through the urban tree canopy is critical to resilience, health, social equity, urban amenity and child-friendly cities in a warming world. Despite these benefits, tree cover remains uneven across metropolitan cities with those most vulnerable experiencing shade and cooling-deficits. Recognising these uneven patterns of greening, this project aimed to: identify the different actors involved in developing, maintaining and governing the urban canopy, and their roles and responsibilities; identify challenges and opportunities in accounting for, and developing financial incentives and regulatory measures to underpin the incorporation of tree canopies into urban development; and pilot methods to integrate ecological and social data, in order to better understand variation in tree canopy cover in diverse suburbs.
What are the emerging trajectories in memory activism in Asia and the Pacific? In what ways do th... more What are the emerging trajectories in memory activism in Asia and the Pacific? In what ways do they navigate through overarching historical, political, and epistemological debates of our time? How do they reconfigure the potentialities of our world?
This paper considers the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission in the State of Victoria in relation to rec... more This paper considers the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission in the State of Victoria in relation to recent reparation claims globally and the advancement of a 'geographic case for reparations' (Inwood, Brand and Quinn 2020). Justice is necessary to unsettling settler dominance (Howitt 2019) and yet successive Australian governments' responses to the ongoing effects of historical injustices experienced by First Peoples has amounted to 'reparative failure' (Durbach 2019). I seek to extend the geographic case for reparations to Australia specifically, but also to reflect on my prior research experience of truth and justice seeking processes and reparation in a non-settler state context.
This paper reflects on reparation as a geographical concern. It considers a specific case of rep... more This paper reflects on reparation as a geographical concern. It considers a specific case of reparation – that arising from a current internationalised criminal tribunal in Cambodia – in light of the recent reparation zeitgeist. Reparative actions from 2019 alone include the French state’s compensation of Holocaust victims for deportations from France, US Congress hearings on reparation for slavery, a University of Glasgow pay out for historical profiting from slavery, and ongoing reparative failure in Australia (and especially Victoria) vis-à-vis the historical injustices experienced by Indigenous Australians (Durbach 2019). Working on a smaller scale, I trace the ‘projectisation’ of reparation at Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal, which is characterised by a proliferation of creative arts-based measures that seek to acknowledge the harm experienced by victims of historical crimes in Cambodia. I show how the very concept of reparation, the capacity of art and artmaking practice to afford a sense of justice, and the role of state and non-state actors, are all open questions in relation to reparation in our times (and places).
This paper examines the role of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) in early legal responses to the... more This paper examines the role of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (TSGM) in early legal responses to the mass violence of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia (1975-1979). Comments left behind in the museum’s historical visitor books reveal how those passing through the museum attempted to expose the actions of the Khmer Rouge as crimes, as well as to campaign for legal recognition of the new Cambodian state, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. Over the first few years of its operation, the museum also hosted and facilitated attempts to preserve and analyse S-21 documents towards the writing of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) draft memorial (case).
While TSGM is recognised as having been an important destination for Cambodians, international journalists and official state delegations in its early years, this paper argues that TSGM was also a site of early legal activism. As well as having a representational role, the museum and its material artefacts produced affective encounters for visitors. Jurists, human rights specialists and faith-based activists were motivated by their experience at TSGM to continue to act politically beyond the museum’s walls and beyond Cambodia’s borders. In Cambodia’s contemporary moment of ‘transitional justice’, these early transnational efforts towards legal reckoning are generally overlooked, as are the ways in which these efforts still resonate, both representationally and affectively, in the present.
Some refer to a ‘cultural renaissance’ underway in Cambodia, even as recent events in the public ... more Some refer to a ‘cultural renaissance’ underway in Cambodia, even as recent events in the public political sphere have troubled many. The arts – film, dance, music, theatre, drawing, sculpture and literature – are increasingly prominent mediums for education and intergenerational dialogue in the country.
One of the novel aspects of Cambodia’s current internationalised tribunal – which seeks justice for the victims of Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975-1979) – is its mandate to award reparation to victim-survivors. This mandate, which is not able to be funded from within the court, has resulted in external states and organisations being called upon to fund Cambodian organisations to develop and enact court-recognised reparation. These reparation ‘projects’ – which include creative arts-based works such as a play, photographic exhibitions, a dance performance, testimonial books, and a graphic novel – seek various forms of social repair and memorialisation.
The European Union and Germany have been significant donors to these reparation projects. The German state in particular has been concerned to not only fund Cambodian expertise toward repair and redress, but also to fund the adoption or translation of concepts developed in post-war Germany as part of creative arts-based works in Cambodia. In this paper I critically examine the case of a play written for Cambodian school children that introduces the concept of ‘civil courage’ (Zivilcourage).
Abstract: Trees are known for their positive impacts in cities including: the provision of shade,... more Abstract: Trees are known for their positive impacts in cities including: the provision of shade, reducing heat island effects, improving amenity, reducing social vulnerability, processing carbon and improving health outcomes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, greening policies at the local and state level have proliferated. Despite these initiatives, tree cover remains stubbornly uneven. A cursory analysis of vulnerability and tree-cover by location shows that those who are most vulnerable to extreme heat events (Loughnan et al 2013) often live in those parts of cities that are most poorly shaded (ISF, 2014). Drawing on a new set of 50 online questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with local council officers in Melbourne conducted in 2014, the aim of this paper is to identify the actors and processes shaping the provision of the urban tree canopy. The results emphasise: i) the wide range of public and private organisations that, in collaboration, provide and maintain tree-cover; ii) the key role of residents within these governance frameworks; iii) the impact of urban development histories on opportunities and limits for urban greening. Theoretically, the paper advances relational models of urban governance in the context of resilient cities showing the urban canopy is the product of diverse actors and agents operating across hybrid and fluid public and private spaces (McGuirk 2012). Recognising this, the paper highlights opportunities for engagement with residents in greening initiatives; and a new integration of ecological and social data through which greening strategies can target those of greatest heat vulnerability.
Rachel Hughes* with Susanna Barnes, Simon Creak, Ha Dinh, Julie Fedor, Balthasar Kehi, Kate McGre... more Rachel Hughes* with Susanna Barnes, Simon Creak, Ha Dinh, Julie Fedor, Balthasar Kehi, Kate McGregor (all of University of Melbourne), Mark Pendleton (University of Sheffield) and Barbara Thimm (Tuol Sleng Museum)
Almost immediately after the opening of the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes in 1979, formal international delegations and other international visitors began to pass through its buildings. Following a guided tour, visitors were ushered into a large meeting room at the rear of the administrative buildings in the centre of the site. The formality of such occasions was underscored by the provision of seating and refreshments for visitors. In this hospitable space, visitors were asked to contribute comments to a visitor book. Around one thousand pages of responses are contained in six visitor books dating from 1979 to the early 1990s. Visitor book responses are written in many languages, including Khmer, English, Russian, Vietnamese, French, Lao, Arabic, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese and German. Many comments are lengthy, impassioned and written on behalf of absent constituencies: fellow citizens, or fellow members of political organisations, peace collectives and trade unions.
This paper will present insights from a series of collaborative analyses of the Tuol Sleng visitor comments of the first book of 1979-1980. These analyses, in the form of conversations between the presenting author and translator-scholars, aim to answer the following kinds of questions:
- what can these visitor books – as written testimony and ‘institutional technology’ – tell us about the early period of the museum?
- what can these visitor books tell us about cultures of acknowledgement and witnessing in post-1979 Cambodia, as well as in the then socialist world more broadly?
- through which ideological, geopolitical and criminological lenses did international visitors view the museum?
- what is the relationship between crafted comment and emotional or affective response?
- what forms of solidarity were promised and by whom?
This lecture provides some preliminary thoughts about ECCC documentation, memorialisation and rep... more This lecture provides some preliminary thoughts about ECCC documentation, memorialisation and reparation legacies. These thoughts are offered in the context of a larger fellowship project that aims to describe the relationship between these effects and wider transformations ongoing in Cambodia. Although legacy has been a contested term and set of organisational practices at the ECCC (Dittrich 2016), the current completion plan for the courts, as well as the significant assemblage of creative activities comprising ECCC reparation and non-judicial measures, demands further critical attention.
This paper sets out the particular role of the civil society organisation Bophana, an audio-visua... more This paper sets out the particular role of the civil society organisation Bophana, an audio-visual resource centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the legal outreach work of Cambodia's internationalised criminal tribunal. The Bophana Centre was co-founded by Cambodian-born and French-educated filmmaker Rithy Panh in 2006. Particular attention is paid to Bophana’s co-development of films that have been shown to legal outreach audiences across the country, as well as to the material assistance offered to the ECCC Public Affairs Section in showing such films. Some conclusions will be drawn about the links between Panh and Bophana’s work and the ongoing role of visual culture in Cambodian public memory of the Khmer Rouge period both prior to, and as an integral part of, the current tribunal.
Introducing her collection ‘On not being able to sleep: psychoanalysis and the modern world’, Jac... more Introducing her collection ‘On not being able to sleep: psychoanalysis and the modern world’, Jacqueline Rose states unequivocally that ‘shame requires an audience’. Rose discusses political projects of shaming and humiliation, as well as how individuals and governments may spurn others' attempts to shame them. Informed by Rose's approach, this paper provides a preliminary discussion of humiliation in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Using three brief instances, I examine what work humiliation (or humiliation spurned) performs in the legal process, and for and between different actors, and make some preliminary comments on the relationship between humiliation and redress.
In one instance, victims attempted to shame the controversial international criminal defence lawyer, Jacques Verges. In a second instance, Case 001 defendant 'Duch' humiliated a witness in the ECCC Trial Chamber. A third instance concerns the day of the Case 001 verdict, when some victims who had been provisionally joined to the case discovered that their applications had in fact been unsuccessful.
In this short talk, I suggest three possible grounds for the expansion of legal geography analyse... more In this short talk, I suggest three possible grounds for the expansion of legal geography analyses to internationalised criminal tribunals: first, to add to conceptualisations of interlegality or geolegality; second, to ask what is at stake in the rescaling of crimes and claims for redress that these tribunals perform; and third, by bringing robust theorisations of the local to outreach programmes.
This paper examines victim participation at the current international Khmer Rouge Tribunal (the E... more This paper examines victim participation at the current international Khmer Rouge Tribunal (the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia). Human rights have been normatively invoked by and for Cambodians since the UNTAC period, but have arguably alleviated little of the economic marginalization experienced by the majority of Cambodians. Indeed, some scholars have argued that collective action attempting social betterment has been badly served by the ‘atomizing strategies’ of aid donors (including human rights organisations) in Cambodia (see C. Hughes, 2009: 127). The recent tribunal — which attempts to bring former Khmer Rouge to justice for crimes committed between 1975 and 1979 — has invited significant participation by ‘victims’ and has provoked new public debate about the past, ongoing suffering and reparation. The participation of collectives of victims, and the nature of their participation, potentially exceeds prior rights-based aims in Cambodia.
Co-authored with Dr Candice Boyd
This paper draws on a collaborative research project examinin... more Co-authored with Dr Candice Boyd
This paper draws on a collaborative research project examining Rome’s Museum of Psychiatry (the Museo Laboratorio Della Mente). This museum, a former asylum, attempts to force an emotional engagement between visitors and (representations of) past and present sufferers of mental illness in order to further destigmatise such conditions. It employs a variety of sophisticated audio and video-based exhibits, as well as novel spatial and architectural forms. Our paper will explore the micropolitics of the attempt to elicit particular emotions in and through this space, drawing on current debates on the extent to which, or in what ways, affect can be modulated, directed or amplified.
Hybrid international criminal tribunals — and especially their public outreach programmes — are o... more Hybrid international criminal tribunals — and especially their public outreach programmes — are often presented as opportunities to ‘ ocalise' international criminal law. At times such claims turn on unhelpful conceptualisations of the local, perhaps especially in the case of Global South, post-conflict, or so-called ‘transitional justice’ contexts. Geographical literatures have long taken issue with the notion of the local as an insulated preserve of authenticity, authority or essence, as well as with the more recent promulgation of the local as the most appropriate scale for international development activities. This paper interrupts unthinking claims for legal localisation by exploring contemporary theorisations of the local in two sub-disciplines of geography: critical legal geography and cultural geography. It is hoped that this interruption will prompt further dialogue about the spatiality of law and spatial justice, and also about international criminal tribunals more specifically. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (or Khmer Rouge Tribunal) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, provides an empirical focus for the paper.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, also known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECC... more The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, also known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), is the hybrid international criminal tribunal seeking justice for the victims of crimes committed in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. One of the novel legal provisions of the ECCC is that of ‘civil parties’. Civil parties are formal parties to the legal proceedings: they may testify and, through lawyers, may submit evidence, question defendants and seek moral and collective reparations. Civil parties are taken to reflect ‘the commitment of the ECCC to its mandate of helping the Cambodian people in the pursuit of justice and national reconciliation’ (ECCC 2013). More than 100 applicants from the Cambodian diaspora have been successful in gaining civil party status in the current ECCC Case 002, and two individuals have travelled from the US to Cambodia to testify. This paper draws on preliminary research into the legal recognition of victims in the diaspora. In doing so it reflects on new questions of Cambodian genocide memory that are provoked by the participation of civil parties from both within and outside of Cambodia.
This paper examines the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)/ Khmer Rouge Trib... more This paper examines the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)/ Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT). Following Arendt (1963) and Felman (2000, 2003) on the problematics of theatre and law, I explore the language of theatre that haunts this ‘hybrid’ tribunal, as well as the theatrics of the trial. Some responses to the tribunal have termed it ‘mere’ theatre, labeling the ECCC as a ‘show trial’ and claiming that justice is being either denied or degraded. This anti-theatrical charge, however, denies the various effects that re-stagingthis past trauma produces for participants and audiences both in Cambodia and overseas. I trace this tension — between the discursive and political charge of ‘show trial’ and the theatrics that trial law cannot help but practice — through popular, professional and mass media responses to the tribunal. Rather than assessing the ECCC/ KRT as a success or failure in legal or geopolitical terms, I argue for an understanding of the tribunal in terms of the performativity of law, memory and geopolitics.
In this paper I offer some observations of proceedings in the current ECCC Case (002) against thr... more In this paper I offer some observations of proceedings in the current ECCC Case (002) against three former Khmer Rouge leaders alleged of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Observations of the legal outreach program of the ECCC are also given in this preliminary account. The paper first suggests greater attention to the legal geographies or legal spatialities of historical justice mechanisms such as hybrid tribunals, where both national and international law is simultaneously applied. Second, I argue that ECCC legal ‘outreach’ work — through facilitating engagement in and awareness of the legal proceedings amongst citizens as observers, witnesses, civil parties, victims and youth — re-shapes the very law the Chambers seek to deploy. In the case of the ECCC, outreach becomes ‘in-reach’ — interests, confusions, memories, bodies and demands of justice are brought into the heart of proceedings with significant effects.
Second annual meeting of the ECCC Researcher Network, co-organised with Dr Maria Elander (La Trob... more Second annual meeting of the ECCC Researcher Network, co-organised with Dr Maria Elander (La Trobe University) and Christoph Sperfeldt, (Australian National University).
This workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss the specific barriers and opportunities face... more This workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss the specific barriers and opportunities faced in middle- to outer-suburban areas of Melbourne in adopting best practice urban forest strategies. An international keynote address will be given by Rebecca Salminen Witt of ‘The Greening of Detroit’, USA. If you haven't already completed the survey, please do so here: https://melbournegeography.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0i8E2TckdznWDtj
The results of the survey will be discussed at the workshop.
The unequal impacts of COVID-19 and climate change, and the ongoing racial violence and structura... more The unequal impacts of COVID-19 and climate change, and the ongoing racial violence and structural discrimination illuminated by the Movement for Black Lives, have exposed the inequalities and injustices still faced by so many around the world. The long shadows of colonialism and plantation slavery linking injustice in the here and now to before are clear. And whilst liberal institutions demand equality for some, they have continually denied calls for reparations. However, these calls do not go away. Arguments for various forms of reparation are gaining support across the world and will continue to return to haunt the institutions of liberal governance in the coming years.
Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for... more Across the world, non-state actors are documenting international crimes and creating archives for accountability purposes. In this article, we consider how archives and their records are ‘pressed into’ legal service. At a time of wider archive creations, we suggest the archives pertaining to the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) provide insights as a compelling ‘post-accountability’ case of the continuum of archival processes. By examining four Khmer Rouge archives, we demonstrate how records are activated in legal processes across different spacetimes, and how the records themselves ‘(im)press upon’ on the legal process. In these processes, different actors seek to control the narrative of the past through archival holdings. We find that entrepreneurial justice, especially in the crucible of a legal process, can create fierce competition between actors over the economic and social capital inherent in record-keeping that is ultimately detrimental to understanding and pluralising the past.
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financial and regulatory dimensions of the urban tree
canopy. Dr Nicole Cook, Dr Rachel Hughes, Dr Elizabeth Taylor,
Dr Stephen Livesley & Dr Melanie Davern. Working Paper 1 October 2015.
Provision of shade through the urban tree canopy is critical to resilience, health, social equity, urban amenity and child-friendly cities in a warming world. Despite these benefits, tree cover remains uneven across metropolitan cities with those most vulnerable experiencing shade and cooling-deficits.
Recognising these uneven patterns of greening, this project aimed to: identify the different actors involved in developing, maintaining and governing the urban canopy, and their roles and responsibilities; identify challenges and opportunities in accounting for, and developing financial incentives and regulatory measures to underpin the incorporation of tree canopies into urban development; and pilot methods to integrate ecological and social data, in order to better understand variation in tree canopy cover in diverse suburbs.
While TSGM is recognised as having been an important destination for Cambodians, international journalists and official state delegations in its early years, this paper argues that TSGM was also a site of early legal activism. As well as having a representational role, the museum and its material artefacts produced affective encounters for visitors. Jurists, human rights specialists and faith-based activists were motivated by their experience at TSGM to continue to act politically beyond the museum’s walls and beyond Cambodia’s borders. In Cambodia’s contemporary moment of ‘transitional justice’, these early transnational efforts towards legal reckoning are generally overlooked, as are the ways in which these efforts still resonate, both representationally and affectively, in the present.
One of the novel aspects of Cambodia’s current internationalised tribunal – which seeks justice for the victims of Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975-1979) – is its mandate to award reparation to victim-survivors. This mandate, which is not able to be funded from within the court, has resulted in external states and organisations being called upon to fund Cambodian organisations to develop and enact court-recognised reparation. These reparation ‘projects’ – which include creative arts-based works such as a play, photographic exhibitions, a dance performance, testimonial books, and a graphic novel – seek various forms of social repair and memorialisation.
The European Union and Germany have been significant donors to these reparation projects. The German state in particular has been concerned to not only fund Cambodian expertise toward repair and redress, but also to fund the adoption or translation of concepts developed in post-war Germany as part of creative arts-based works in Cambodia. In this paper I critically examine the case of a play written for Cambodian school children that introduces the concept of ‘civil courage’ (Zivilcourage).
Almost immediately after the opening of the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes in 1979, formal international delegations and other international visitors began to pass through its buildings. Following a guided tour, visitors were ushered into a large meeting room at the rear of the administrative buildings in the centre of the site. The formality of such occasions was underscored by the provision of seating and refreshments for visitors. In this hospitable space, visitors were asked to contribute comments to a visitor book. Around one thousand pages of responses are contained in six visitor books dating from 1979 to the early 1990s. Visitor book responses are written in many languages, including Khmer, English, Russian, Vietnamese, French, Lao, Arabic, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese and German. Many comments are lengthy, impassioned and written on behalf of absent constituencies: fellow citizens, or fellow members of political organisations, peace collectives and trade unions.
This paper will present insights from a series of collaborative analyses of the Tuol Sleng visitor comments of the first book of 1979-1980. These analyses, in the form of conversations between the presenting author and translator-scholars, aim to answer the following kinds of questions:
- what can these visitor books – as written testimony and ‘institutional technology’ – tell us about the early period of the museum?
- what can these visitor books tell us about cultures of acknowledgement and witnessing in post-1979 Cambodia, as well as in the then socialist world more broadly?
- through which ideological, geopolitical and criminological lenses did international visitors view the museum?
- what is the relationship between crafted comment and emotional or affective response?
- what forms of solidarity were promised and by whom?
*Presenting author
In one instance, victims attempted to shame the controversial international criminal defence lawyer, Jacques Verges. In a second instance, Case 001 defendant 'Duch' humiliated a witness in the ECCC Trial Chamber. A third instance concerns the day of the Case 001 verdict, when some victims who had been provisionally joined to the case discovered that their applications had in fact been unsuccessful.
This paper draws on a collaborative research project examining Rome’s Museum of Psychiatry (the Museo Laboratorio Della Mente). This museum, a former asylum, attempts to force an emotional engagement between visitors and (representations of) past and present sufferers of mental illness in order to further destigmatise such conditions. It employs a variety of sophisticated audio and video-based exhibits, as well as novel spatial and architectural forms. Our paper will explore the micropolitics of the attempt to elicit particular emotions in and through this space, drawing on current debates on the extent to which, or in what ways, affect can be modulated, directed or amplified.
An international keynote address will be given by Rebecca Salminen Witt of ‘The Greening of Detroit’, USA.
If you haven't already completed the survey, please do so here: https://melbournegeography.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0i8E2TckdznWDtj
The results of the survey will be discussed at the workshop.
Lunch will be provided.
#GreenMelb