Drawing on participant observation at communal sites of genocide memory and ethnographic interviews with villagers, monks, and nongovernmental organization stakeholders, I longitudinally trace (over a five-year period) the localization of Euro-Western genocide commemoration in the Cambodian landscape. Hybrid Khmer-Western communal memorials that display victim remains and promote genocide pedagogy signify elite capitulation to Western cosmopolitan memory and reap the rewards of atrocity tourism. Despite the facade of successful localization, my data point to elite and nonelite resistance to cosmologically dangerous or semiotically meaningless commemorative practice and to the failure of hybrid memorialization. A close reading of Cambodian Buddhist conceptualizations of memory, commemoration, and relations between living and dead reveals how and why facades of localization culturally work to sustain simulacra of engaged universals, creating a “perfect failure” of global-local translation. My findings problematize the globalization of a Holocaust model of commemoration and the human right and duty to remember as a pillar of global genocide pedagogy in today’s postconflict memoryscapes. I consider implications for understandings of intercultural friction and the productive dynamism of global-local encounters while deconstructing contemporary anthropological frames that occlude critique of global-local engagement.

中文翻译：

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柬埔寨种族灭绝纪念活动的“完美失败”

利用在种族灭绝记忆的公共场所进行的参与者观察以及对村民、僧侣和非政府组织利益相关者的民族志访谈，我纵向追踪（超过五年的时间）柬埔寨景观中欧洲-西方种族灭绝纪念活动的本地化。展示受害者遗骸和推广种族灭绝教育法的高棉-西方混合公共纪念馆意味着精英向西方世界性记忆投降，并获得暴行旅游的回报。尽管本地化表面上是成功的，但我的数据表明精英和非精英对宇宙学危险或符号学上毫无意义的纪念实践的抵制以及混合纪念化的失败。仔细阅读柬埔寨佛教关于记忆、纪念、生者与死者之间的关系揭示了本地化的表象如何以及为什么在文化上起作用以维持参与普遍性的拟像，从而造成全球-本地翻译的“完美失败”。我的研究结果对大屠杀纪念模式的全球化以及作为当今冲突后记忆景观中全球种族灭绝教育学支柱的人权和责任的纪念提出了问题。我考虑了对跨文化摩擦的理解和全球-地方相遇的生产活力的影响，同时解构了阻碍对全球-地方参与的批判的当代人类学框架。我的研究结果对大屠杀纪念模式的全球化以及作为当今冲突后记忆景观中全球种族灭绝教育学支柱的人权和责任的纪念提出了问题。我考虑了对跨文化摩擦的理解和全球-地方相遇的生产活力的影响，同时解构了阻碍对全球-地方参与的批判的当代人类学框架。我的研究结果对大屠杀纪念模式的全球化以及作为当今冲突后记忆景观中全球种族灭绝教育学支柱的人权和责任的纪念提出了问题。我考虑了对跨文化摩擦的理解和全球-地方相遇的生产活力的影响，同时解构了阻碍对全球-地方参与的批判的当代人类学框架。