ABSTRACT
The chapter shows how many of the violent practices carried out by staff at the Khmer Rouge central prison S-21 can be understood as a way of utilizing the bodies of inmates for the revolution. The way the body is utilized is structured by different “ontologies of the body,” that is, by cultural ideas about the nature of the body, how it is structured, how it functions, and what forces live in it. The medical staff at S-21, among others, utilized the bodies of inmates as blood banks for the revolution, for medical and human experiments, and for the extraction of organs. Despite the fragmented nature of the available information, it is clear that these practices are all aimed at constructing a self-reliant medical system based upon traditional as well as Western medicine. Prisons served not only as facilities for the extraction of fabricated confessions but also for medical testing and the extraction of bodily resources. At S-21, a peculiar – and for the rule of the Khmer Rouge typical – interplay between systemic and ad hoc characteristics of S-21 medical practices becomes evident when demands by the party center to make systematic use of resources (to extract blood or gallbladder liquids and test remedies) are met with improvisations by their cadres to meet the demands.
