Subjectivity (DC-Cam and the ECCC Outreach Tour)

The chapters in Part III, “Eddies,” seek to step behind this justice facade and explore the lived experience of victim participation as well as the ways in which this experience was mediated by another Cambodian intermediary organization, Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). Chapter 7 builds upon the previous chapters by unpacking how the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) sought to produce a certain liberal democratic, right-bearing juridical subjectivity even as alternative subjectivities also mediated the experience of Cambodians in and around the court. Specifically, Chapter 7 focuses on a non-governmental organization outreach tour, which included attending the first day of two weeks of civil party testimony in which relatives of S-21 victims testified. Three international civil parties—each in many respects exemplary victims embodying the qualities of wound, suffering, helplessness—spoke. Even as they did, it was evident that there were cracks in this justice facade revealing underlying complexities obscured and pushed out of sight. Such fissures were also evident when the outreach participants visited Tuol Sleng and performed a ceremony for the spirits of the dead, highlighting Buddhist subjectivities backgrounded by the juridical process.

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