‘When a memory is recalled like a car part from storage, there is no scientific certainty as to how it is put back, probably not as it was.’ – Norman M. Klein, The history of forgetting: Los Angeles and the erasure of memory (Verso, 1997).
Echoing Klein's work Ian Baird explains, ‘We need to see memories as experiences that are not simply recalled, but rather produced and reproduced over time, and entwined with agency, so that in the end people are not simply recalling past acts, but are considering past productions and reproductions of the past’ (p. 243). Within academia, there is a substantial amount of work on collective memory, but very little on how conflict areas shape it. This collection of essays addresses the lacuna by looking at the fluid process of collective memory for those who live in the post-conflict landscapes of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Each essay provides details into the way that war-torn places become sites of memory, what Pierre Nora calls lieux de mémoire. In this way, the collection provocatively showcases the symbiosis between people's identities and their war debris. Krisna Uk writes about artists and craftsmen who attribute new meanings and functions to war relics and their memories. The 70-year-old Cambodian funerary painter Keulagn Beuragn transforms horrifying memories of the bombing plane into aesthetic remembrances of those who died by it (pp. 223–8). Not only memories of the war, but war-riddled landscapes change in the post-conflict era. Vatthana Pholsena's account of Route 9 in southern Laos provides powerful descriptions of the lives of Sepon villagers who lived through the US war in Vietnam and its aftermath. Vietnamese soldiers and Royal Lao Army prisoners repaired the road in the postwar period, converting sites like a ‘reeducation camp’ where prisoners were tortured into an exhibition centre. Pholsena argues that beyond these governmental endeavours is a local social component. Villagers in Sepon see the reconstruction of the road as a marking of progress, civilisation, and development. In this way, they situate their own narrative within the road restoration ‘in a historical timetable that followed their own recovery from the war’ (p. 172).
In her chapter on war debris in Vietnam, Christina Schwenkel writes about the international tourism that has developed for demilitarised zones (p. 149), but also notes the cultures that develop between ‘professional’ deminers and ‘hobby’ deminers who collect war debris at their own peril (p. 147). Here, people are not only redefining meaning with the war debris; in this example, war debris is part of the process in which people are redefining themselves. Perhaps one of the more physical and horrific examples of this comes from Susan Hammond's accounts of Agent Orange in Vietnam. The negligent manufacturing of the herbicide by US companies like Monsanto and Dow led to the devastation of thousands of people in addition to their ecology. Over forty years afterward, people still suffer from debilitating illnesses and a high rate of birth defects. Hammond writes, ‘Agent Orange-infested areas in these “dioxin hotspots” are not only legacies of war, but these landscapes containing toxic debris exert ongoing ruination of people's lives …’ (p. 201).
Trauma and religion are two powerful threads throughout the collection that are heavily present, but under-acknowledged. Most of the essays refer to traumatic memories and events and nearly every chapter reserves space to discuss Buddhist or indigenous religious practices. For instance, in Sina Emde's chapter on Cambodian national memorial sites people find agency to their suffering by personalising the national history. Tuol Sleng was once a high school, but the Khmer Rouge converted it into an interrogation centre. Thousands were tortured and then transferred to Coeung Ek, where they were killed. Families with missing relatives have sought to know where and how they died. Some families visit the exhibits about carnage at these sites and insist that their loved ones died there. Their assertions are a form of agency; in this way, they transform Tuol Sleng and Coeung Ek from sites of misery to sites of solace. Religion also provides agency through one of its primary functions: by knowing how and when their relatives died, families have the means to conduct Khmer Buddhist funeral rites, in effect, to right an unnatural death. In this vein, Emde explains that ‘the practice of Buddhism and the performance of Buddhist rituals bring back lost continuity and security after past turmoil and in present uncertain times’ (p. 37). Similarly, Markus Schlecker notes the power of commemorative stelas in his chapter on rural Vietnam, where Buddhist rituals are appropriated by local patrilineal kin groups to increase their control and influence.
Interactions with a violent past is an impressive theoretical project that links post-conflict landscapes to collective memory and identity. To this end, its contributors draw heavily upon the theoretical building blocks of Maurice Halbwach, Paul Ricœur and Pierre Nora. Some essays have sections laden with dense, relevant theoretical detours and disciplinary nomenclatures. Specialists will greatly appreciate these parts. Other essays contain very rich examples and images that would appeal to scholars, graduate students and advanced students of sociology, anthropology, geography, political science, and psychology. The short references to trauma suggest further work to come; this already deeply interdisciplinary approach would find enrichment from trauma studies, such as Kai T. Erikson's contribution on collective trauma or sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander's recent work on cultural trauma. Interactions with a violent past provides an invaluable tool for the contemporary study of communities, resilience, and recovery. I eagerly look forward to the scholarship it will foster.
