Dutiful tourism: Encountering the Cambodian genocide

Abstract

AbstractThis 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 conceive 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.