BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//EuroSEAS 2024//EN X-WR-CALNAME:EuroSEAS 2024 BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Amsterdam X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Amsterdam BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 DTSTART:19700329T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 DTSTART:19701025T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20241121T125500 UID:euroseas-2024-reading-the-s-21-traces-towards-new-archival-assemblages-of-khmer-rouge-crimes SUMMARY:Reading the S-21 traces: towards new archival assemblages of Khmer Rouge crimes LOCATION:REC A1.04 DESCRIPTION:The Vietnamese army entered Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979 after a two-weeks blitzkrieg against the Democratic Kampuchea forces. When a patr ol came across the Khmer Rouge prison S-21, the men found thousand and thou sand pages of prisoners’ ‘confessions’, execution lists, photos, and cadres ’ notebooks the S-21 staff had left behind. Early one, this ‘bureaucracy of death’ (Kiernan and Boua, New Statesman, May 1980) was seen as S-21’s spec ificity. When the new authorities established the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museu m (TSGM) onsite a few weeks later, it was with a double mission: expose the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime and organize the S-21 documents for the prosecution (in absentia) of Democratic Kampuchea leaders Pol Pot and Ieng Sary (Phnom Penh, August 1979). Thirty years later, these archives played a gain an evidentiary role in the trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders. Furth ermore, in 2009, the UNESCO inscribed the S-21 archives as ‘World Documenta ry Heritage of International Significance’. Since then, nearly half a milli on pages have been digitized.\n\nThe proposed interdisciplinary panel will explore the richness and complexity of this crucial material.\nObviously, t he S-21 archives have never been static: documents have disappeared, others reappeared (eg, donation of 1,500 photos of S-21 prisoners in 2012). Over time, they have known different types of intervention for either preservati on or reuse. Concurrently, there have been, at the global level, changes in the way researchers approach archives (eg, ‘archival turn’, ‘archive-as-pr ocess’, decolonial archives).\n\nIn light of this, the participants will ad dress the methodological, epistemological, and ethical challenges that aris e from: 1) the use of the S-21 archives in the judicial context and beyond; 2) the integration of new materialities of sources (eg, graffiti, textiles ) into the S-21 archives. They will propose novel research perspectives on a range of issues, including ways of reading the ‘confessions’, the organiz ation and categorization of the S-21 archives, and the functioning of the p rison itself. Through this conversation, the panel will situate these resea rches in the continuity of the studies conducted from 1979 onwards (eg, Dav id Chandler, Steve Heder, Ben Kiernan), and at the same time, take stock of the impact on interpretive frameworks of major transitions such as the pos t-Cold War transition and the impending closure of the Khmer Rouge tribunal . URL:https://euroseas2024.org/panels/reading-the-s-21-traces-towards-new-archival-assemblages-of-khmer-rouge-crimes DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240724T160000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240724T173000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR