An article today in the SF Chronicle (Q&A About Cambodia Today) highlighted some interesting aspects of memory and legacy in the 1970s Khmer Rouge genocide. Andrew Ross, the Chronicle writer, visited Cambodia and wrote "For those who survived, witnessed the horrors and lost entire families, I was told, forgetting is more important than remembering"
He also observed that "there are those - the majority of Cambodians in 2007 were born after the Khmer Rouge - who, I was told, neither seek to know nor even believe what they are told." He is referring both to the children of victims and of perpetrators, though in the case of the Cambodian genocide, political groups were targeted rather than racial or religious ones so it is possible that a child could have both victims and perpetrators for relatives. According to a former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, younger Cambodians ask "'why do you impose your pain on us?' They want to move on."
In H-block we had a very interesting discussion about the role of memory in society and identity. We had two conflicting arguments: one that focused on memory's positive role in preserving culture, establishing identity, and preventing, to some extent, horrible events such as genocide from being repeated. The other side focused more on the negative aspects: racism, prejudices, and negative classification and grouping.
My questions are:
1) Is memory a good thing? Does it help us survive and grant meaning to our lives, or does it leave us living in the past and prevent us from moving forward? What is the point of memory?
2) Why do you think many Cambodians today emphasize forgetting over remembering?
3) Many of the victims and descendants of victims of the Holocaust that were highlighted in class films and speakers talked about the importance of remembering, even if their memories were painful. Why, according to the article, is this not the case in Cambodia?
4) Anything else? The article was so pertinent to our class that it could not go unposted.
