Critical Essay 1

Cambodia Trip Experience

 The cultural Commodities that are being consumed and produced in Cambodia are there shared experience during the revolution that was led by Pol Pot he was a Cambodian politician who led Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 to 1979. Pol Pot reformed Cambodia as a new Democratic Kampuchea. Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society his government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms. Those regarded as enemies of the new government were killed. These mass killings, coupled malnutrition strenuous working conditions and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 and 2 million people, approximately a quarter of Cambodia’s population, a period later termed the Cambodian Genocide. During the trip in the genocide museum and the killing fields, I was able to gather insights on how identities are shaped in settings where there are memories of collective violence and stress that had happened. For the cultural commodity I think that it would be the survivors of the genocide in S-21, because they use their own experience on what had happened during that time and they use this as a source of income. For the dominant narratives that emerged, I would say that It would be the survivors of the genocide, in my opinion the resistive narrative of the survivors is that when being asked by a tourist about what had happened you could see it through their eyes the inhumane things that was being done to them. The dominant narrative that I observed is that they are proud of their history, because they were able to preserve their history. For me Cambodia is a great educational place in where you would be able to learn and understand  that they use their agony as a tool for their income.