Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer - Alexander Hinton

The USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research presents this public lecture by Alexander Hinton (Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs, Rutgers University, Newark), presented at the University of Southern California on November 2, 2017, organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and cosponsored by the USC Center for Visual Anthropology.
Learn more about the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research here: dornsife.usc.edu/cagr
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During the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood trial for these crimes against humanity. While the prosecution painted Duch as evil, his defense lawyers claimed he simply followed orders.
In this lecture, Alexander Hinton will discuss his new book Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer. In his book, Professor Hinton uses creative ethnographic writing, extensive fieldwork, hundreds of interviews, and his experience attending Duch's trial to create a nuanced analysis of Duch, the tribunal, the Khmer Rouge, and the after-effects of Cambodia's genocide. Interested in how a person becomes a torturer and executioner as well as the law's ability to grapple with crimes against humanity, Professor Hinton adapts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" to consider how the potential for violence is embedded in the everyday ways people articulate meaning and comprehend the world. Man or Monster? provides novel ways to consider justice, terror, genocide, memory, truth, and humanity.