Interactions with a Violent Past: Reading Post-Conflict Landscapes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (IRASEC-NUS Press Publications on Contemporary Southeast Asia) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9971697017 ISBN 13: 9789971697013

Publisher: National University of Singapore Press, 2013

Synopsis

There has been little research on the lasting impact of the violence of Second and Third Indochina Wars on local societies and populations, in Vietnam as well as in Laos and Cambodia. Today's Lao, Vietnamese and Cambodian landscapes bear the imprint of competing violent ideologies and their perilous material manifestations. From battlefields and massively bombed terrain to reeducation camps and resettled villages, the past lingers on in the physical environment. The nine essays in this volume discuss post-conflict landscapes as contested spaces imbued with memory-work conveying differing interpretations of the recent past, expressed through material (even, monumental) objects, ritual performances, and oral narratives (or silences).
 While Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese landscapes are filled with tenacious traces of a violent past, creating an unsolicited and malevolent sense of place among their inhabitants, they can in turn be transformed by actions of resilient and resourceful local communities.

About this title

About the Author:

Vatthana Pholsena is associate professor in the Department of Southeast Asia Studies at the National University of Singapore and a fellow of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

About this edition

• Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 9971697017
• ISBN 13: 9789971697013
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Pholsena Vatthana, Tappe Oliver