Integration of the Sacred in Cambodia: Memorials from the Khmer Rouge Period

Victims, communities, and nations often seek ways to remember the past in order to move forward after genocide or mass violence. When the state of Democratic Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime, was overthrown in January 1979, citizens and local governmental authorities across Cambodia were directed to collect human remains and artifacts from the thousands of discovered mass graves and place them in memorials for preservation. While memorialized sites may be seen as sacred spaces for remembrance, memorialization of wide-scale trauma occurs within a particular political and social context. To explore the interrelationship between the memorials (the sacred) and modern Cambodian sociopolitical construction of Khmer Rouge violence (the profane), the theory of human remains’ affective materiality and agency (Krmpotich C, Fontein J, Harries J. J Mater Cult 15(4):371–384, 2010) was employed. Thirteen memorials across Cambodia were visited and ten interviews with local memorial caretakers were conducted. Observational and interview data were used to assess what the enshrined skeletal remains and memorials provoke, enable, constrain, and/or permit regarding the memory of Khmer Rouge violence. The results indicate that despite the memorials being created as political propaganda, they are viewed by Cambodians as sacred—imbued with religious and spiritual value—while simultaneously being profane components of daily life. Integration of the sacred into modern Cambodian cultural practices provides a frame for analyzing the various treatments of the anonymous dead after mass violence. These memorials represent a unique case study for the intersection of the sacred and indigenous conceptions of memory, space, and preservation.