Optic of Hatred - Visualizing the Vietnamese "Other" in Cambodia

Informed by scholarship on the phenomenon of anti-Vietnamese violence and discrimination in Cambodia, this dissertation probes the construction of Vietnamese Otherness throughout Cambodian history and its imprints upon the lived reality of an eclectic population colloquially dubbed Yuon. It investigates the ways diverse groups of people identified as Vietnamese, either by themselves or others, can be construed within a Khmer ethnonationalist discourse as the source of sociopolitical troubles—enemies from within, invaders of Cambodian land, strangers in our midst—that threatens the stability and survival of the Cambodian nation.

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This way of seeing had inspired waves of genocidal violence against the country’s ethnic Vietnamese population that surged in the 1970s and restarted in the 1990s, although overt violence has since largely subsided. Building on historical and anthropological literature on ethnonationalism, identity formation, and ethnic conflict, the dissertation historicizes the phenomenon of Khmer anti-Vietnamism within the longue durée of Khmer-Vietnamese relations, but also examines the affective imprints of this history upon interethnic experience today. It suggests that the reason a “Vietnamese problem” continues to resurface in Cambodian politics and social life has much to do with the persistence of an Optics of Hatred, a politically articulated and socially maintained way

of seeing Vietnam and Vietnameseness as markers of alterity and social contamination.

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As the sum of collectively shared memories rooted in highly politicized interpretations of a long interethnic history, this Optics of Hatred governs how Vietnamese “otherness” can be depicted, embodied, and negotiated in quotidian life in Cambodia. As it seeps

into the various domains of everyday life, the Optics of Hatred functions as both a challenge and a key toward ethnic conciliation.

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