Desiring Cambodia

Abstract

I illuminate developments in contemporary Cambodia with political and aesthetic theory. Cambodia has long been of great interest to me, in particular its violent transition from socialism to capitalism. To understand the particularities of this transition and Cambodia's unfolding encounter with neoliberal capitalism, I map the libidinal circuits of desire that flow through Cambodia from within and without. Following this, I explore the fantasies generated by these desires, and track the consequences of these shared imaginings in the political, literary and economic realms. In the chapters that follow I deploy critical theory to shed new light on issues including the Khmer Rouge trials, Cambodia's memorial spaces of atrocity, the construction of Khmer ethnicity, and Cambodia's spiral repetition of violence.