Resetting Time and Restarting with the Rootstock
"The place is Dam Dek, east of Siem Reap, in what is now and forever known as Democratic Kampuchea. The time is the beginning of time, Year Zero of the Khmer Rouge revolution."
- Novel of the 1984 film, The Killing Fields
farmers "are to be learned from rather than taught"
- David Chandler, discussing Khmer Rouge ideology
"Pol Pot, who seized control of the capital city of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975 and declared “Year Zero,” a reset of time, history, and the outside world"
- John Vilanova, "Mongol Hordes, the Khmer Rouge, and the Islamic State: Non-Modern Conceptions of Space and Time"
"The Khmer Rouge’s project can be likened to a continually accelerating tornado of events... nostalgically backwardlooking and utopian, hyper-emancipatory in its claims and unique in
its brutality..."
- Andrus Ers, "Year Zero: The Temporality of Revolution Studied Through the Example of the Khmer Rouge"
