Phnom Penh (Cambodia), February 6th 2009. Vann Nath, paintor and survivor of Khmer Rouge centre S-21, during an art workshop at the Bophana centre. Richard Rechtman: "Vann Nath is probably the first witness I've seen who is a witness to nothing but forces the other to testify." (Photo: John Vink / Magnum)09-02-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set
Psychiatrist and anthropologist Richard Rechtman - who has devoted part of his work to Cambodian refugees in France for over twenty years - is in Phnom Penh for the first time. One of the messages he is trying to make people hear is that victims of the Khmer Rouge in particular must stop talking about death. Why? Because, according to him, it equates with making death sacred in a manner that pertains to the genocidal rhetoric. He defends the importance of giving back their lives to the dead by turning them back into subjects with their own subjectivity and stop seeing them as a wholly abstract “dead” entity. In the second part of an interview by Ka-set, he discusses among others the place of the testimony of victims or the change in the victim's status.
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