Contesting Sites of Memorial Reconstruction and Cultural Amnesia in Pin Yathay’s Stay Alive, My Son

Book: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India by CSMFL Publications

Sambrita Bhattacharyya
Independent Researcher, Burdwan, West Bengal, India.

10.46679/9789349926639ch05
This chapter is a part of: Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens from India
ISBN (Ebook):978-93-49926-63-9
ISBN (Hardcover Print):978-93-49926-41-7
ISBN (Softcover Print):978-93-49926-75-2

© CSMFL Publications & its authors.
Published: November 10, 2025

Bhattacharyya, S. (2025). Contesting Sites of Memorial Reconstruction and Cultural Amnesia in Pin Yathay’s Stay Alive, My Son. In A. G. Uppal & D. Barot, Cultural Memory in Translation: Revisiting Cultural Memory Through Interpretative Lens (pp 53-64). CSMFL Publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.46679/9789349926639ch05

Abstract

The commemorative archives of the Cambodian Genocide have been a matter of dust under the rug for ages, not deemed as something of international importance, until recent times when the “Khmer Rouge Tribunal” brought to light the perspicacity of the mass destruction and unaccounted genocide in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 under the Khmer Rouge or Pol Pot Regime. Maurice Halbawchs’ conception of the difference between lived memory and official history can be read in conjunction with Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) which also seeks to compartmentalize a difference between memory and history (Assmann, 2008, p. 110). But, in the context of the memoir of Cambodia’s forgotten genocide and systematic memoricide, the mediality of collective memory is often overlooked. The dynamic nature of a past that is reconstructed daily and urged to be forgotten by the present powers is difficult to differentiate from the present by the cognitive abilities of the brain when it encounters serially traumatising events.

Keywords: Cambodian Genocide, Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Collective Memory, Memoricide, Sites of Memory (Lieux de mémoire), Transitional Justice

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