Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 49, No.

3, December 2008
ISSN 1360-7456, pp318–330

Dutiful tourism: Encountering the

Cambodian genocide
Rachel Hughes
Department of Resource Management and Geography, Melbourne School of Land and Environment,
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Email: [email protected]

Abstract: This paper considers contemporary international tourism to a genocide museum in

Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It argues that existing theorisations of ‘dark tourism’ are inadequate for the
task of understanding the motivations, actions and experiences of visitors in such a place, or of such
sites as contested international institutions. The paper is concerned with the ways in which visiting
practices encouraged at the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes in the immediate post-genocide
period (the 1980s) continue to affect visiting practices in the present. Moreover, the absence of
familiar curatorial practices and technologies of interpretation leads contemporary visitors to con-
ceive of the space of the museum and their visit in unexpected ways. The dutiful comportment of
visitors at Tuol Sleng both supports and challenges the moral geographies enacted by contemporary
travel.

Keywords: Cambodia, dark tourism, genocide, moral geographies, museum visitors

Introduction subjectivities and specific, embodied perfor-

mances that continually (re)produce both ‘dark’
Cambodia routinely appears in registers of dan-
places and their visitors.
gerous destinations. From news magazine head-
lines like ‘Pol Pot Park’ (Lyall, 2002) to academic
theories of ‘dark tourism’ (Lennon and Foley, Theorising morality and mobility
2000), Cambodia is touted as a new form of
tourism destination. This paper seeks to critique Travel has long inspired debates about morality
the current analytic categories and explanations and morals, especially concerning different
provided by tourism studies, especially as they travel styles and the realities they appear to
are applied to tourism in Cambodia. I examine confirm. As Judith Adler argues:
tourism to Cambodia’s national genocide
[T]ravel styles link representations of reality
museum, the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide with deliberately cultivated forms of subjectiv-
Crimes, to raise questions about the salience ity, throwing the traveller as a figure into relief
and operation of the term ‘dark tourism’. as well as charting the ground against which
Drawing on interviews and observations of this figure moves. (Adler, 1989: 1384)
tourists at the museum,1 I discuss the specific
narratives and imaginaries that enable tourists’ In recent times, many scholars have made links
travel to, and experience of, this site. I attend to between transformations in travel forms and
particular motivations and to affect as a desir- travel availability and the different meanings
able element of tourists’ experience of the given to mobility under postmodernity (Kaplan,
museum. I argue that in place of the catch-all 1996; Clifford, 1997; Rojek and Urry, 1997;
label of ‘dark tourism’, more empirically Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998; Cresswell, 2006).
grounded analyses might better explain what Such work has explored ‘mobile subjectivities’
is, in practice, an array of tourisms, each as key elements of (post)colonial, diasporic and
entailing different histories, geographies, tourist transnational conditions. Of all mobile figures,

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

however, leisurely ones, such as the tourist or tourists’ (Urry, 1990: 11). Urry has more
traveller, remain the most maligned and are recently added the following places to his reg-
often cast as amoral. Zygmunt Bauman levels ister of ‘unexpected destinations’:
one of the more hyperbolic charges:
Alaska, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Antarctica espe-
No-one but the tourist is so blatantly, conspicu- cially in Millennium-year, Changi Jail in Sin-
ously dissolved in numbers, interchangeable, gapore, Nazi Occupation sites in the Channel
depersonalised. . . . Moral proximity, responsi- Islands, Dachau, extinct coal mines, Cuba
bility and the uniqueness – irreplaceability – of and especially its ‘colonial’ and ‘American’
the moral subject are triune; they won’t survive heritages, Iceland, Mongolia, Mount Everest,
(or, rather, they shouldn’t have been born) Northern Ireland, Northern Cyprus under
without each other. Moral responsibility van- Turkish ‘occupation’, Pearl Harbour, post-
ishes when ‘everybody does it’ . . . The tourist communist Russia, Robben Island in South
is bad news for morality. (Bauman, 1996: 54) Africa, Sarajevo’s ‘massacre trail’, outer space,
Titanic [and] Vietnam’ (Urry, 2003: 2).
Bauman considers ‘the tourist’ as an allegorical
figure – an every person of postmodernity – and Chris Rojek also runs together a series of dispar-
twins the tourist with ‘the vagabond’. He sug- ate sites in advancing his notion of ‘Black Spots’
gests that both these figures ‘seem to respond as ‘disaster sites and sites of notable deaths’:
sensibly to the chances our times offer and the
ambushes they hold’ (Bauman, 1996: 52).2 But Examples include the Auschwitz death
the figure of the promiscuous, amoral tourist camp, the killing fields of Cambodia, Dealey
fails to explain tourism to places that are decid- Plaza in Dallas where John F. Kennedy was
edly un-fun, places that appear to prompt assassinated . . . (Rojek, 1997: 62)
experiences of critical reflection and sombre
remembrance. Sites of war and other forms of mass political
With such sombre tourisms in his sights, Jim violence are disproportionately represented,
Butcher (2003) nominates the ‘new moral and yet undertheorised, in Urry and Rojek’s
tourist’ for scholarly attention: the tourist who accounts.
consciously seeks to mitigate against what are John Lennon and Malcolm Foley’s study Dark
perceived to be the exploitative and harmful Tourism (Lennon and Foley, 2000) attempts to
effects of mass tourism on host environments account for interest in places and sites linked to
and cultures. New moral tourists promote and violence, war and significant loss of life. Like
participate in alternative (and generally small- Rojek, Lennon and Foley make passing refer-
scale) tourisms. According to Butcher, it is the ence to Cambodia, and note the existence of
perceived fragility of host sites and societies in Tuol Sleng as ‘The Museum of Human Geno-
the face of increased tourism – the ubiquitous cide, Cambodia’ (Lennon and Foley, 2000: 25,
discourse of the tourism ‘onslaught’ – that has 163). They trace the production of interest in
produced this new breed of travellers. The ‘dark places’ through ‘global communication
obvious detrimental effects of modern mass technologies’, arguing that global, mediatised
tourism, Butcher argues, leads new moral tour- representations of such places allow hosts to
ists to deliberate about how and where they commodify and promote historical sites in order
should travel. As Butcher himself recognises, to secure tourists’ ‘impulse purchases’. Accord-
some of his arguments with regard to this group ing to Lennon and Foley (2000: 23), tourists at
echo those already made about the ‘post- ‘dark tourism’ sites include: ‘specialists’ who
tourist’: the tourist who rejects all claims to are ‘not a crucial, or even important, part of
authenticity and considers travel to be a series dark tourism’, those who ‘visit due to serendip-
of games or texts that can be played (Urry, 1990: ity, the itinerary of tour companies’ and those
11). John Urry considers destinations such as who are ‘merely curious [and] happen to be in
‘the Leprosy Museum in Bergen, the Japanese the vicinity’. Questions of tourist agency (over
Death Railway in Burma and the Gestapo head- serendipity) and tourists’ complex motivations
quarters in Berlin’ as typical of the ‘out of the and experiences (over mere ‘curiosity’) regard-
ordinary experiences demanded by post- ing travel to sites of violence are largely elided.

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R. Hughes

Lennon and Foley argue that dark tourism is profitable sites that politicise historical events.
‘an intimation of post-modernity’, but subse- Such analyses imply that the development of
quently remark that they ‘do not wish to enter such sites is propagandist rather than curatorial,
into any philosophical debate over the use of but fail to critically investigate the concept of
this term’ except to recognise ‘the significant propaganda or acknowledge that the same
aspects of post-modernity which are broadly criticisms can and have been levelled at major
taken to represent its main features’ (Lennon metropolitan museums and sites in the West
and Foley, 2000: 11). Such statements reveal a (see for example Charlesworth, 1994; Hurley
refusal on their part to engage with prior theo- and Trimarco, 2004).
risations of tourism that draw sophisticated links This paper takes its theoretical bearings
between postmodernity and mobility, and theo- instead from studies that have reinvigorated the
risations of war tourism more specifically (see concept of ‘moral geographies’ in relation to
for example Diller and Scofidio, 1994). What is travel and citizenship (Matless, 1994, 1997)
missed in this refusal is the recognition that and colonial philanthropy (Lambert and Lester,
international tourism can rarely be thought of 2004), as well as from work on the performa-
if not through war and violence (Diller and tivity of tourism and other forms of mobility (see
Scofidio, 1994: 25; Smith, 1997). Far from the Desforges, 2000; Crouch, 2001, 2004; Cress-
reification of dark tourism as a largely unidirec- well, 2006). There have been consistent calls
tional and unprecedented form of leisure for attention to norms, ethics and morality in
mobility, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio’s the discipline of geography since the 1970s,
analysis traces the symbiosis between tourism especially around questions of social justice
and war in terms of the historic movements of (see Jackson, 1984; Driver, 1988; Smith, 1997,
armies, travel as a key element of armed forces’ 2000; Proctor, 1998). David Matless reconsiders
recruitment strategies, the protraction of war ‘moral geographies’ through detailed attention
through tourism, and the explicit targeting of to mobile figures. Matless shows that particular
tourism sites and industries by warring states leisure pursuits in the English countryside were
(see also Van Den Abbeele, 1994). historically presented in terms of the necessary
I consider the label ‘dark tourism’ and theo- production of the modern citizen and consti-
ries that position tourism as either morally defi- tuted a set of embodied practices and represen-
cient or morally surpassing to miss the analytic tations or ‘moral geographies’ (Matless, 1994,
mark as explanations of tourisms to specific 1997). Matless himself warns that it is not easy
sites of mass political violence. It is not enough to make analogies between England of the
to suggest that contemporary tourists are inter- 1930s and 1940s – when ‘landscape and its
ested in such places because they offer ‘out of pleasures are set up primarily in terms of the
the ordinary’ experiences in a world of touristic nation’ (Matless, 1997: 141) – to contemporary
play both at home and abroad. Detailed case places. In place of the nation, he observes, ‘citi-
studies of ‘dark’ destinations are far fewer zenship and belonging have increasingly clus-
than are passing references to such sites in the tered around local and global environments’
pursuit of general theories and typologies. This (Matless, 1997: 141).
is especially true of ‘dark places’ outside of It is to a global site and discourses of humani-
Europe and North America. Where such sites tarian belonging that my analysis turns. In place
are examined, tourisms of war and violence of the national citizen travelling into the
tend to be characterised as contributing to the national countryside, I consider international
commodification and sanitisation of war and tourists travelling to and through a specific over-
violence (Henderson, 2000; Kennedy and Wil- seas institution and memorial site. Of note are
liams, 2001; but see as exceptions: Alneng, those narratives and affects that are linked to
2002; Colvin, 2003). Analyses of non-Western extra-national or geopolitical discourses and
sites are often engaged in a kind of double also to discourses of global humanitarianism
denigration: of tourists for their apparent passiv- and memorialisation. Lambert and Lester refer
ity in being led to such sites, and of national to ‘channels of compassion linking the west and
governments and cultural institutions of other its colonial “periphery” that were instituted
(often post-conflict) countries for developing above all by colonial philanthropists’ and pro-

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

ductively suggest that these ‘moralities of close- bodia’s burgeoning tourism industry (Williams,
ness, distance and connection’ are relevant 2004; Winter, 2006; Wood, 2006). The most
to contemporary humanitarian mobilisations ubiquitous souvenir of tourism in Cambodia is
(Lambert and Lester, 2004: 322–323). I now the ‘Danger: [Land] Mines’ sign with its stark
turn to moralities of closeness, distance and skull and crossbones motif.5 Tim Winter draws
connection at Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Museum attention to:
of Genocide Crimes, beginning with a sketch of
the place of the museum within contemporary the allure Cambodia holds as a place of insur-
tourism in Cambodia. rection and danger. Sales of T-shirts embla-
zoned with images of military ordinance or the
words ‘I survived Cambodia’ illustrate how this
Promoting Tuol Sleng Museum of framing is communicated to, and thus circu-
genocide crimes lates across, the broader touristic community.
(Winter, 2006: 45)
For more than a decade now, tourism has pro-
vided an important source of foreign capital for While only a small number of tourists take up
Cambodia. Visitor arrivals to Cambodia in 2000 the more extreme opportunities offered in
(when research was conducted for this study) Cambodia – such as firing off various types of
totalled 466 365, a figure which represented a weapons at Phnom Penh’s ‘shooting range’ –
27% increase on 1999 arrivals. Visitor arrivals in discursive trips into Cambodia as a ‘heart of
the Royal Kingdom exceeded one million in darkness’ (also a long-standing Phnom Penh
2004, representing a 50% increase on the pre- nightclub) remain hugely popular.
vious year (Royal Government of Cambodia, The Tuol Sleng Museum in inner city Phnom
2005). The capital city of Phnom Penh contin- Penh occupies the site of ‘S-21’ (security facility
ues to play a ‘gateway’ role for tourism to the 21), a Khmer Rouge interrogation and torture
rest of the country, despite the direct flights now facility central to the conduct of the genocide of
available from major southeast Asian cities to 1975–1979 (Fig. 1). Tuol Sleng was opened in
the northern Cambodian city of Siem Reap, 1980 as a national level memorial site only
home of the famed Angkor temples. months after the end of Khmer Rouge rule.6 It
Discourses of Cambodia’s darkness and exhibits photographic portraits of victims, physi-
intrigue draw heavily on the ‘Phantasmatic cal structures and instruments used for incar-
Indochina’ of French colonial rule in mainland ceration and torture, documentary photographs
southeast Asia, an imaginative geography and maps, and disinterred human remains. The
‘whose luminous aura sustains . . . erotic fanta- museum does not appear in Ministry of Tourism
sies and perpetuates exotic adventures of a publications.7 Ministry officials consider images
bygone era’ (Norindr, 1996: 1). More recently, of Tuol Sleng and its sister monument, the
film and television portrayals of the political
grouping known as the Khmer Rouge – led by
the notorious Pol Pot – have inflected this exotic
imaginary with the brutality that characterised
Khmer Rouge rule between 1975 and 1979.3
Media reports of the peacebuilding undertaken
by the United Nations in the country in the
early 1990s, and of ensuing hostilities between
Cambodia’s main political parties, contribute
to a widely held perception that Cambodia is a
politically unstable place.4 The abduction and
murder of internationals by the Khmer Rouge is
sometimes noted by tourists when discussing
their prior perceptions of Cambodia. These
associations of Cambodia with violence, danger
and dependency are amplified by representa-
tions and practices generated from within Cam- Figure 1. Building A, Tuol Sleng Museum

© 2008 The Author 321

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R. Hughes

Figure 2. Location of the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes and the Choeung Ek ‘Killing Fields’ Memorial,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Choeung Ek ‘Killing Field’ site southwest of the the impression that Cambodia is not a good
city (see Fig. 2), as undesirable for major pro- destination for a holiday’.8 The view that these
motional advertising. The Ministry is concerned sites should not be marketed to international
that images of these two national sites ‘may give visitors is in direct contradiction to government

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

policy of two decades prior; in 1979 and 1980, To know more: Visiting Tuol Sleng as
foreign journalists were among Tuol Sleng’s first an interpretative project
visitors.9
When I asked interviewees directly about their
Beyond the formal representations sponsored
motivation for coming to the museum – ‘Why
by the Ministry of Tourism, tourists are routinely
have you come to the museum?’ – many paused
directed to Phnom Penh’s genocide museum by
before offering a response. Some asked if they
publications provided free in bars, restaurants
could come back to the question later in the
and guesthouses. In one such publication, the
interview. It became clear that it was impossible
Phnom Penh Visitors’ Guide, Tuol Sleng is listed
for interviewees to respond by stating that they
as one of seven ‘points of interest’ for tourists in
had come unthinkingly or indifferently to the
Phnom Penh. The Visitors’ Guide states that the
museum. Whether or not their visit was indeed
site is:
an ‘impulse purchase’ of the sort that Lennon
a former detention and torture facility [that]
and Foley suggest, it could not be counte-
has been preserved in the state in which the nanced or reported as such. This pause, and
KR [sic] left it. (Phnom Penh Visitors’ Guide, the normative statements that often followed it,
2000: 4) reveal a moral imperative at work in tourists’
relationship to the museum:
Locally produced tourist maps also promote the
museum. Perhaps most importantly, however, It’s a stop [on itineraries], a must stop, which is
Tuol Sleng is featured in international traveller not [a] bad [thing], not bad at all. ‘Angela’:
34-yo female, USA citizen, 7 day visit [Inter-
guidebooks, including Lonely Planet (Cambo-
view 270302].
dia), Let’s Go (Southeast Asia) and the North
American Moon Travel Handbook (Vietnam, This imperative posits a visit to the museum as
Cambodia and Laos), among many others. proper conduct, at least for international visitors
Lonely Planet suggests that Tuol Sleng is ‘testa- to the country.
ment to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge’ (Taylor
et al., 1996: 82) In the guidebook’s ‘Things to
see [in Phnom Penh]’ section, the museum Visitors discursive repertoires and dispositions
appears second only to the National Museum of
Tourists’ narratives of their experience as a
Khmer Arts and Culture. The entry for the
visitor to Tuol Sleng range from direct responses
museum warns that:
to the museum’s displays, to recollections of
past times and places in which they were aware
Altogether, a visit to Tuol Sleng is a profoundly
depressing experience . . . wall after wall of
of Cambodia or the Khmer Rouge (often involv-
harrowing black-and-white [victim] portraits ing media reports, books or films), to stories of
conjure up images of humanity at its worst. experiences of similarly disturbing places. Such
Tuol Sleng is not for the squeamish. (Taylor narratives are not generally framed in terms of
et al., 1996: 83) ‘meaning’. As Gillian Rose observes, inter-
viewees talk instead ‘of practice, process and
In the context of a ‘travel survival kit’ (the sub- the facticity of objects, and for very good critical
title for the Lonely Planet series), such a state- reasons’ (Rose, 1997: 318). I have been mindful
ment implicitly valorises a decision to visit Tuol of this ‘gap’ between talk of practices, processes
Sleng: if travel is something to be ‘survived’, and things and any claims to meaning in my
then a warning of difficulty might be read as analysis of tourists’ narratives. Like Rose, I
encouragement. Having consulted their guide- understand this gap in terms of a specific and
books, most tourists arrive at Tuol Sleng with important politics of interviewees’ interpretative
some knowledge of the site’s sinister role during projects – a deliberate openness about what
the Khmer Rouge period. They also arrive such a place might mean to different people and
with significant anxiety about how they might in different times.
respond to the museum and the expectation that Visitors nonetheless make sense of the
Tuol Sleng will educate them about Cambodia’s museum and their experience there through
recent past. various discursive repertoires or imaginaries.

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R. Hughes

These include: (i) Cambodia as an impoverished apologetic, cynical, deferential, frustrated,

place; (ii) Cambodia as an excessive and para- sceptical, derogatory, prescriptive and excited
doxical place (see also Winter, 2006), beautiful in relation to these imaginaries. In their com-
but weighed down by the trauma symbolised by portment, visitors at the museum are almost
specific sites like the museum and the generic always silent for extended periods of their visit,
spatiality of ‘killing fields’;10 (iii) Cambodia as a and they appear (and speak of being) concerned
pawn of larger geopolitical powers (the former to behave appropriately. Many do not feel com-
colonial power of France, the United States of fortable taking photographs or video footage
America, Vietnam); and (iv) Cambodia as a inside the museum, and express shock, revul-
place of international memorial significance sion, amazement and sometimes anger as they
necessary to prevent further genocide. While move through the various exhibits. I now turn to
the first two discursive repertoires conceive of the fourth repertoire noted above – Cambodia
Cambodia’s difference from other nation states as a place of international memorial signifi-
or destinations, responses to the museum are cance – and some of the particular dispositions
rarely limited to these. Reports of Cambodia’s associated with this imaginary.
uniqueness and isolation were often followed
with statements about Cambodia’s connection
to international events and processes.
Proximate but unknown: The international
These repertoires are tempered by various
significance of Cambodia
affective dispositions (see Jackson, 2001). For
example, while sometimes these imaginaries of Visitors to Tuol Sleng cede great importance to
the museum and Cambodia were raised as the relatively recent nature of the Cambodian
uncontroversial, they were just as often cited as genocide, often reflecting that they were alive
ideas to be opposed or contested. Such imagi- when events depicted at the museum were
naries were rarely discussed in the abstract, taking place:
rather they were attached to ‘the facticity of
objects’ encountered in the museum (museum I remember being on a bus in Detroit . . . going
signs, photographs, instruments of torture, to work, when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer
Rouge, so I remember that. And then I remem-
walls, shackles, barred windows, paintings by
ber following the [media] reports about what
survivors, human remains, etc.), and to the had happened here . . . ‘Mike’: 52 yo male,
embodied and emotional experience of moving USA citizen, NGO worker in Thailand,
through the various spaces of the museum (see 1–2 week visit [Interview 270302].
Fig. 3). Visitors to Tuol Sleng are variously
supportive, studious, disturbed, self-effacing, Another interviewee drew the following
sympathetic, ambivalent, uncomfortable, distinction:

If you’re looking at the dungeons, fourteenth

century dungeons or something like that – and
I’ve been many places, a few places like Gal-
lipoli, where lots of people died – you just get
a sense of an enormous tragedy, but you’re at a
long way away from it. For me . . . you’re a
little bit more involved with things [that hap-
pened] twenty or thirty years ago. ‘Tim’: 27 yo
male, UK citizen, teacher, 6-month visit [Inter-
view 030402].

Recent historical events are considered more

proximate, and thus of greater interest, than
events outside one’s own lifetime. Cambodia’s
proximity to, or distance from, world attention
Figure 3. ‘Victim’ photographic portraits on display at during and following the Khmer Rouge period
Tuol Sleng Museum was a common topic of conversation that fol-

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

lowed from this observation, and was often . . . and [it] ended up with Pol Pot. ‘Brian’: 36
accompanied by expressions of disbelief, exas- yo male, UK citizen, social worker, 8 day visit
peration, cynicism or anger. It was generally felt [Interview 030405].
that too little was known of Cambodia’s past in
Europe, Australia and North America. A geo- For others, visiting the museum is an exercise in
politics that positioned Cambodia as peripheral testing the status of Cambodia as place of
to the concerns of other nations and peoples memory against popular texts that depict the
was acknowledged but criticised: geopolitics of the mid-1970s (such as the film
The Killing Fields), as well as against their
own touristic experiences.12 Lennon and Foley
I mean it’s so cruel and this happened recently,
suggest that dark tourism sites introduce
and I’m surprised that there doesn’t [sic]
show more on TV . . . everyone knows about
‘anxiety and doubt about modernity and its
Hitler . . . and Pol Pot killed three million consequences’ (Lennon and Foley, 2000: 12).
. . . but . . . why is it not spread around the The quotations above demonstrate rather that
world? ‘Tanya’: 36 yo, Swedish citizen, 7-day anxiety and anger, as well as interest and sym-
visit [Interview 030404]. pathy, were emotions often experienced before
visitors arrived in Cambodia. Furthermore,
The rhetoric of ‘Never Again’ employed by a their doubts were associated with much more
number of interviewees, and the comparisons immediate and explicitly political concerns
made between Tuol Sleng and European Holo- than ‘modernity’, including their own countries’
caust sites and museums elsewhere, drew complicity in conflicts in mainland southeast
Cambodia’s past into an analytic relation with Asia in the 1970s, the specific ideology of the
European experiences. This is an interpretative Khmer Rouge, and the role of mass media cov-
strategy that is encouraged by popular writings erage and their subsequent personal investiga-
on the Pol Pot period, innumerable mass media tions in bringing Cambodia to their own and
representations and also guidebooks (see others’ closer attention.
Williams, 2004). Lonely Planet makes a direct
comparison: ‘[l]ike the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge
Unassisted passage
were meticulous in keeping records of their bar-
barism’ (Taylor et al., 1996: 83) The Cambodian Overall, however, tourists generally exit the
Government itself provoked comparisons of the museum in a state of confusion. Their desire to
European Holocaust and Khmer Rouge rule know more about Cambodia’s past – in short to
throughout the 1980s, and Tuol Sleng officials be directed in an interpretative project –
themselves visited sites in East Germany in remains largely unrequited. Aside from some
198211 (see also Ledgerwood, 1997; Hughes, brief text on an initial signboard, there is little at
2003). On the whole, however, tourists at Tuol Tuol Sleng in the way of permanent technolo-
Sleng generally invoked European Holocaust gies of interpretation such as labels, captions or
sites in terms of the emotions they had person- text panels. The English-language visitor bro-
ally felt during their visits, rather than through a chure given out to tourists on receipt of their
discussion of any deliberate curatorial link. entrance fee presents some information about
The secret bombing of Cambodia conducted the S-21 ‘prison’ and the Pol Pot period more
by the United States at the end of the Vietnam broadly, but the exhibitions within the museum
War also remains an important extra-national itself are object and image-based with scant
narrative for tourists. It too is a narrative set interpretative text. Visitors feel significant
down in guidebooks, and it is one often anxiety about this lack of commentary, expla-
approached through dispositions of shame nation and analysis. By their own admission,
and guilt. One interviewee reported that the explanatory signage is a familiar feature of
museum had led to his thinking about: museums ‘at home’ and is ‘looked for’ by visi-
tors. In short, while many arrive at the museum
how the country [Cambodia] got caught up in with the expectation of a better understanding
macropolitics, you know, Americans, Chinese, of the Pol Pot period, they leave with the hope
Vietnamese all [with] their own interests that their ‘being there’ was at least significant. In

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R. Hughes

other words, the experience is no longer episte- groups, lawyers associations, peace organisa-
mological but testimonial, not ‘I now know tions, workers’ parties).14 These early interna-
more’ but ‘I visited’. The next section offers tional visitors were escorted on compulsory
some further thoughts on why this might be tours of Tuol Sleng Museum as a condition of
the case. their visa.15 At this time, the PRK government
looked to such international visitors to act as
witnesses who might support and disseminate
From interpretative project to the symbolics
news of Cambodia’s suffering (see Hughes,
of visitation
2006: 153–188). Foreign visitors were to return
As I have suggested, tourists generally expect to their countries of origin and tell people what
that their visit to the museum will assist in their had ‘really’ happened in Cambodia (Ledger-
interpretation of the Cambodian genocide. Visi- wood, 1997: 90) that Vietnam had ‘liberated’
tors are generally disappointed in this regard, Cambodia from its genocidal rulers, but had not
and express concern at a lack of guidance or ‘invaded’ or ‘occupied’ its smaller neighbour.
instruction on the part of the museum. The Thus it was hoped that visitors would help to
paucity of interpretative materials is because of turn the tide of popular international opinion
the original design of the exhibition, a design against those powerful geopolitical actors who
that relied on the explanation of objects and were shunning the PRK, thus ushering in a new
images by guides. Because of a long-term lack era of aid, assistance and international political
of funding for the museum, this original ‘mute’ legitimacy.
exhibition has not been significantly renovated In keeping with this larger geopolitical aim,
since 1979.13 As this original exhibition is the Tuol Sleng Museum was designed for interna-
one encountered by present-day visitors, some tional, as well as national, audiences. Guided
discussion of the curatorial logic that character- tours of the museum for international visitors
ised the inception of the museum is necessary. were originally provided by museum staff,
including Ung Pech, a survivor of S-21 and the
first Director of Tuol Sleng Museum.16 Guides
Tuol Sleng testimonies
escorted formal delegations, journalists and vis-
As noted, the development of Tuol Sleng iting scholars through the exhibition, pointing
Museum began soon after the end of Khmer out aspects of the original buildings and provid-
Rouge rule. The demise of Pol Pot’s regime was ing explanations of the images and objects on
brought about by Vietnamese and allied Cambo- display.17 While there is still a view among
dian (anti-Khmer Rouge) forces that invaded Cambodian government and civil society
Cambodia from the Vietnam border in late 1978. leaders that Tuol Sleng does well to expose
In what was to become the last decade foreign visitors to Cambodia’s past suffering,
of the Cold War, Vietnam’s invasion resulted in there is far less interest now from state
Cambodia’s isolation from an international authorities as to the effects of such exposure.
political system dominated by Vietnam’s recent Cambodia now enjoys international political
foe, the United States. While aid and coopera- recognition, and has joined the ranks of its one-
tion was received from other socialist nations time detractor, the Association of Southeast
and some international non-governmental Asian Nations. There is significant ambivalence
organisations, the United States, China and the about the future of the museum and the funding
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and assistance necessary for its continuation are
all refused to recognise the new Vietnamese- increasingly being sourced through private
assisted Cambodian state, then known as the organisations.18
People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). At the present time, guided tours of the
Those granted visas for travel to the PRK museum are rare for those arriving indepen-
during the first decade after 1979 included tech- dently of organised groups. A request and addi-
nical experts assisting in reconstruction efforts, tional payment can solicit a guided tour, but
as well as journalists, aid workers, and dele- there is no displayed information about tours
gations from sympathetic socialist states and and a guide is not always available. The authori-
political organisations (such as women’s tative narration given by survivors of the

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

genocide, so much a part of early visitors’ returned home. Two young Canadian inter-
experiences, is no longer heard. Tourists, being viewees were empowered to answer an adver-
unable to witness the testimonies of others, feel tisement posted in their guesthouse in which a
their knowledge of this place to be incomplete. local hospital asked for blood donations. With
Rather than continuing to pursue interpretation so much discussion among tourists regarding
and knowledge, many visitors respond to this the manifest poverty they encounter in Cambo-
situation by reconceptualising their visit to dia, philanthropic donations of personal effects,
Tuol Sleng in terms of a symbolic gesture. time, energy and even bodily fluids evidence a
In this sense, tourism is considered as a form of desire to depart from monetary-based encoun-
second-order humanitarian work. In this way of ters (such as giving money to people begging in
thinking, individual tourists’ actions in Cambo- public spaces).19
dia are aligned with the practical and symbolic These sorts of practices necessitate a return to
work of other international, moral travelling the discussion of the ‘moral/amoral tourist’. The
figures such as diplomats and peacekeepers. donation of blood, as a bodily fluid, references
other embodied donations routinely given by
tourists in Cambodia: those associated with sex
Tourists and humanitarian belonging tourism. Sex tourists in Cambodia are widely
The shuttling from a tourist subjectivity to that of figured to be amoral individuals whose acts
a humanitarian actor is common among travel- are unremittingly exploitative and debasing.20
lers in Cambodia, and is often associated with While sex tourism and war tourism in Cambo-
the imaginary of Cambodia as an impoverished dia are simultaneous considerations of some
place: popular travelogues, few academic pieces offer
an analysis that links these travel forms. Such an
I’ve heard of all the difficulties, the civil war, analysis would necessarily entail discussion of
and I wanted to, you know, not necessarily see the increased prevalence of sex work in Cam-
the civil war, but just see how things were after bodia that has accompanied successive military
that, if there’s a way – because I still have a interventions in the country and of the ongoing
desire of helping out an NGO – if there
exoticisation, feminisation and infantalisation of
something I could do here. ‘Jennifer’: 33 yo,
USA citizen, education consultant, 9-day visit
Cambodians, both men and women, in tourism
[Interview130401]. representations. For some tourists, moral
tourism to Cambodia’s genocide memorials and
This participation in global humanitarianism other cultural sites is made all the more impera-
recalls the discourses and moral geographies of tive by the perceived amorality of fellow travel-
colonial philanthropy. Transglobal philanthropy lers engaging in sex tourism. Like Matless’s
included two strategies that continue to operate anti-citizen (Matless, 1997: 143) sex tourists are
within contemporary humanitarian appeals – constructed within the moral geographies of
identification and empowerment: contemporary tourism as self-interested, antiso-
cial, vulgar and alien to sites of memory such as
The former functions when ‘the other’ comes to Tuol Sleng, as well as to sites and experiences
be seen as part of one’s ‘shared moral uni- of Cambodia’s culture, art, architecture and
verse’, while the latter is based on the recog- natural environment. This is not an abstract
nition that there is something that can be done opposition, rather it is relationally enacted in
about the issue of concern. . . . [B]oth strate- response to the places, practices and represen-
gies were at work in the colonial philanthropic
tations associated with sex tourism, and in
campaigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, which sought to bridge the physical
interpersonal encounters with self-nominated or
and imaginative distance between ‘here’ and suspected sex tourists themselves.
‘there’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Cohen, in Lambert and
Lester, 2004: 333). Conclusion
Interviewees spoke of their intention to donate Tourisms to sites of mass political violence are
money or efforts to local organisations, another significantly more complex than current ‘dark-
of giving away most of her clothes before she tourism’ or ‘(a)moral tourism’ theories suggest,

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R. Hughes

in large part because such theories generalise motivations and responses of a highly articulate and
and diminish that which they purport to active visitor group of non-Cambodian, English speak-
ing, ‘free independent travellers’ (i.e. not members of a
explain. The decisions of contemporary visitors larger tour group). The narratives and practices of the
at Tuol Sleng are refigurings of the world from interviewees accessed are loosely representative of a
within various discourses of morality. They larger free independent travellers group, but not illus-
(re)construct moral geographies which bring trative of the entire visitor population. I use the terms
events of the past into proximity, allow political ‘interviewees’ and ‘visitors’ interchangeably in this
paper, but it should be noted that other types of visitor
concerns to travel along with them and act are present at the museum.
in ways (albeit minor) that they believe will 2 Bauman further argues: ‘the vagabond and the tourist
improve the lives of those in the places they are not postmodern inventions. What is new is that in
visit. Their visiting involves returning to a moral the postmodern world, the vagabond and the tourist
terrain in which mass political violence and its are no longer marginal people or marginal conditions’
(Bauman, 1996: 54). Bauman allows a third (collective)
ongoing social and (geo)political effects are figure into his allegorical drama – the ‘natives’ or
approached through dutiful exposure. Among ‘locals’ who occupy the spaces and places through
tourists to Tuol Sleng, there is an expectation which the vagabond and the tourist move – but fails to
that the place will help them learn more about explore the consequences of this figure for his larger
Cambodia’s genocidal past. The museum is schema. For a critique of the gendered nature of figures
of mobility in contemporary theories, see Jokinen and
instead experienced as a space in which they Veijola (1997).
may demonstrate sympathy for the victims of 3 The pre-eminent film in this regard is the 1984
this period and, for some, for victims of mass Warner Bros film The Killing Fields, (produced by
political violence in other places and times. David Puttnam and directed by Roland Joffé), but this
Many who visit Tuol Sleng do so because they group also includes John Pilger’s 1979 documentary,
Year Zero: The silent death of Cambodia and more
desire to be haunted (see Till, 2005). Moreover, recent films such as S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing
as global humanitarians, they feel they ought to Machine (2003) by Cambodian-born, French-
be haunted. In such a situation, knowledge is educated filmmaker Rithy Panh.
less authoritative than affect: it remains ulti- 4 The 1996 edition of Lonely Planet Cambodia states that
mately desirable to have submitted oneself to ‘[a] visit to Phnom Penh, its surrounding attractions
and to Angkor need be no more dangerous than a trip
the ghosts of others. to any of the countries surrounding Cambodia. Adven-
turous travel, on the other hand, is irresponsible (Taylor
Acknowledgements et al., 1996: 9). This warning has been removed from
the guidebook’s 2005 edition.
I offer my sincere thanks to all the interviewees 5 This sign must also be recognised as an oblique signi-
that took part in this research. Thank you to fier of Cambodia’s genocide sites. Uncremated human
Helen Jarvis and the Documentation Centre of remains are prominent in tourists’ experiences of
national memorial sites like Tuol Sleng, but remain
Cambodia in Phnom Penh for their fieldwork
unrepresentable in the souvenir economy.
support in 1999 and 2000. A version of this 6 For a discussion of Cambodian visitors to the museum
paper was given at the joint International in the period immediately following its inauguration,
Geographical Union/Institute of Australian see Hughes (2003).
Geographers/New Zealand Geographical 7 An entry on the Ministry of Tourism’s main Website for
Phnom Penh (see http://www.mot.gov.kh) is the only
Society 2006 Brisbane conference – I am grate-
direct advertising of the museum provided by the
ful to all those who responded there. I also wish Ministry.
to acknowledge the support of the Center for 8 Personal communication with His Excellency Rous
Khmer Studies, Siem Reap. I am indebted to an Ren, Undersecretary, Ministry of Tourism, Royal Gov-
anonymous referee of this paper, and to Linda ernment of Cambodia, 6 March 2000.
9 The more recent plans to develop the former Khmer
Malam, Katharine McKinnon and Katherine
Rouge ‘stronghold’ of Anlong Veng in Cambodia’s
Gibson, for their expert assistance. northwest for domestic and international tourism is,
however, in direct contradiction of this sentiment (see
Notes Wood, 2006).
10 Interviewees often spoke about such ‘haunting’ arising
1 Observations and interviews were conducted at the from the personal suffering of Cambodians – a condi-
museum between January and May 2000. It was not tion of too much memory, or too many bad memories,
my intention to attempt a comprehensive study of visi- an inability to forget or ‘work through’ this excess of
tors to the museum. I was instead interested in the memory.

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Encountering the Cambodian genocide

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