Nature, Poetry, and Public Pedagogy: The Poetic Geographies of the Khmer Rouge

Abstract

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.