Nature, Poetry, and Public Pedagogy

The Poetic Geographies of the Khmer Rouge

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8376705
AutoresJames A Tyner (Kent State University, autor correspondente), Sokvisal Kimsroy (Kent State University, autor correspondente), Savina Sirik (0000-0002-3466-4847, Kent State University, autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume105
Fascículo6
Páginas1285-1299
Data de publicação2015-11-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00045608.2015.1066740
OpenAlexW1843506314
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas64

Between 1975 and 1979, more than 2 million men, women, and children died in what has become known as the Cambodian genocide. In just under four years, approximately one quarter of the country's prewar population succumbed to arbitrary murder, torture, detention, starvation, and disease. Amidst these acts of destruction, however, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK; the Khmer Rouge) advanced various pedagogical practices, including the promotion of poetry. Superficially, poems produced by the Khmer Rouge are literary forms of propaganda. Such a conclusion is incomplete. Through a reading of Khmer Rouge–era poetry, this article contributes to two themes in geography: fictive and public pedagogy. We argue that the Khmer Rouge used poetry as a form of public pedagogy. More specifically, Khmer Rouge–era poetry presented nature as the fulcrum on which society was to be transformed. The cultivation of a proper political consciousness required the nurturing of a community identity of what Democratic Kampuchea was to become. This argument is developed in five sections. First, we provide a brief overview of literary geographies. We then consider the transformative power of public education. Third, we provide an overview of educational policies under the Khmer Rouge. This is followed by a discussion of nature as conceived by the CPK. Our main empirical analysis of Khmer Rouge poetry is presented in the fifth section. Finally, we conclude with a consideration of the politics of creative interventions as a form of public pedagogy

Art · Democracy · Genocide · Human rights · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · ROUGE · Sociology · Torture · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies