Cambodge, me voici : trauma, post-mémoire et construction d ’un espace culturel féminin dans le théâtre parlé de Jean-Baptiste Phou
Cambodge, me voici: trauma, postmemory, and the construction of feminine space in the spoken theater of Jean-Baptiste Phou

Summary/Abstract: More than forty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, the trauma of genocide still weighs heavily on the French-Cambodian diaspora. Confronted with the silence of the previous generation who refuses to talk about the genocidal past, Jean-Baptiste Phou uses Khmer spoken theatre to give voice to four Cambodian women and to portray their lives on stage. In this essay we propose a reading of Cambodge, me voici in the light of Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory. The intersection of the axes of the protagonists’ desire and the creation of a familial, feminine and maternal space will allow us to analyse the formation of this diasporic memory and its intra- and intergenerational transmission through two sororal and mother-daughter pairs. We postulate that the choice of casting and the staging of the two, French and Khmer, versions of the play transform the stage into a site of shared memory in which the role played by women in the reparation and transmission of Cambodian cultural heritage is revealed.

• Details
• Contents