- Social movements and revolution, Revolutions, Gender And Violence, Human Rights, Political Violence, Agrarian Studies, and 43 moreThailand, Southeast Asian Studies, Transitional Justice, Asian Studies, History of Political Violence, Thai Studies, Legal History, Translation, Dissident Literature, New Left, Political History, Politics in Thailand, Thai History, Thai political history, Biopolitics, Governmentality, Liberal Democracies, Cold War, Thai politics, Agrarian History, Political Subjectivity, Farmers, Tenancy, Human Rights Defenders, Intha Sribunruang, Assassination, Political Theater, Drama, Cultural Politics, Thai, Impunity, Law, Poetry, Southeast Asia, Socialist Realism, State Violence, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Asian History, Gender, Sexuality, War, and Peaceedit
Across regimes both dictatorial and democratic since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thai citizens have experienced a range of forms of extrajudicial violence at the hands of state officials, including torture, disappearance,... more
Across regimes both dictatorial and democratic since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thai citizens have experienced a range of forms of extrajudicial violence at the hands of state officials, including torture, disappearance, assassination, and massacre. In nearly all cases, state officials have done so with impunity and escaped sanction and accountability. This impunity has been produced and sustained through the unwillingness of state officials to find their colleagues responsible, the intimidation of victims of violence and other citizens, and weak legal and other institutional structures. Impunity takes place in public and is pedagogical and meant to be witnessed, from the instance of state violence to the evasion of accountability and finally to the creation of evidence about impunity for it. Drawing on overlooked archival and other state documents, hundreds of newspaper articles, memoirs of civil servants and victims of state violence, and court observation to reveal previously-unexamined incidents, In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand offers a new history of modern Thailand written through the lens of impunity complete with a new chronology, new actors, and new unresolved questions. Between the lines of the lives and deaths of victims of state violence and the dissimulation and denials of state officials, unexpected and surprising insights about violence, law, and human rights emerge. By placing the production of impunity side-by-side with the different challenges to impunity made by victims and survivors of state violence, occasional dissident civil servants, and, particularly beginning in the 1970s, the international and domestic human rights movements, the new history of modern Thailand found in In Plain Sight is not one of seamless state domination, but also records and takes account of the continual and courageous challenges made to it.
For more information and to order, see https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5453.htm
For more information and to order, see https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5453.htm
Research Interests:
"In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state... more
"In October 1973 a mass movement forced Thailand’s prime minister to step down and leave the country, ending nearly forty years of dictatorship. Three years later, in a brutal reassertion of authoritarian rule, Thai state and para-state forces quashed a demonstration at Thammasat University in Bangkok. In Revolution Interrupted, I focus on this period when political activism briefly opened up the possibility for meaningful social change. Tenant farmers and their student allies fomented revolution, I show, not by picking up guns but by invoking laws— laws that the Thai state ultimately proved unwilling to enforce.
In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.
Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, I reveal the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—I show how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand."
In choosing the law as their tool to fight unjust tenancy practices, farmers and students departed from the tactics of their ancestors and from the insurgent methods of the Communist Party of Thailand. To first imagine and then create a more just future, they drew on their own lived experience and the writings of Thai Marxian radicals of an earlier generation, as well as New Left, socialist, and other progressive thinkers from around the world. Yet their efforts were quickly met with harassment, intimidation, and assassinations of farmer leaders. More than thirty years later, the assassins remain unnamed.
Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles, cremation volumes, activist and state documents, and oral histories, I reveal the ways in which the established order was undone and then reconsolidated. Examining this turbulent period through a new optic—interrupted revolution—I show how the still unnameable violence continues to constrict political opportunity and to silence dissent in present-day Thailand."
Research Interests: Law, Southeast Asian Studies, Thai Studies, Violence, Agrarian Studies, and 21 moreCold War, Agrarian Change, Southeast Asia, Cultural Politics, Thailand, Thailand, Thailand, State Theory, Thai History, Social movements and revolution, Agrarian History, Northern Thailand, Students, Revolution, Thai political history, Tenancy, Assassination, Assassination, State Violence, Farmers, and Land Rent Control Act
เสียงกลอนสะท้อนการณ์ : รวมบทกลอนเลือกสรรของนิตยสารสตรีสาร พ.ศ. ๒๕๑๓-๒๕๑๙ งามพิศ จากาซินสกี • จารุวรรณ แอ็งเกิล • ไทเรล ฮาเบอร์คอร์น รวบรวม รถติด นํ้าท่วม การเมืองปั่นป่วน เศรษฐกิจไม่ดี แล้วยังมีประท้วงต่อสู้เรียกร้อง... more
เสียงกลอนสะท้อนการณ์ : รวมบทกลอนเลือกสรรของนิตยสารสตรีสาร พ.ศ. ๒๕๑๓-๒๕๑๙
งามพิศ จากาซินสกี • จารุวรรณ แอ็งเกิล • ไทเรล ฮาเบอร์คอร์น
รวบรวม
รถติด นํ้าท่วม การเมืองปั่นป่วน เศรษฐกิจไม่ดี แล้วยังมีประท้วงต่อสู้เรียกร้อง ที่โน่นที่นี่อยู่เรื่อย!! ฟังดูแล้วเหมือนเมืองไทยปี ๒๕๕๖ แต่ที่จริงนี่คือชีวิตประจำวันระหว่างปี
๒๕๑๓–๒๕๑๙
หนังสือเล่มนี้รวมบทกวีที่ผู้อ่านทั่วประเทศส่งมาลงใน สตรีสาร นิตยสารที่อยู่คู่เมืองไทยถึง ๔๘ ปี สมัยที่ยังไม่มีทั้งเฟสบุ๊คและเว็บบอร์ด ยามพบเจอะเจออะไรที่อยากจะบ่น ชื่นชม หรือเสียดสี ก็เขียนเป็นกลอนส่งมาลงใน สตรีสาร ได้ ผ่านไปหลายสิบปี การบ่นอย่างมีวาทะศิลป์เหล่านี้ก็กลับกลายเป็น time capsule แห่งอดีต สะท้อนและบันทึกเสียงที่ สด จริง และชัดยิ่งของประชาชนคนธรรมดาๆ ที่พยายามดำรงชีพท่ามกลางความเปลี่ยนแปลงเติบโตของเมือง ความทันสมัย เดือนตุลา ฮิปปี้ อุดมการณ์ และอื่นอีกเหลือที่จะนับได้
การรวบรวมอนุรักษ์กลอนในหนังสือเล่มนี้ทำให้เห็นถึงความน่ารักน่าชัง และความแสบคันแบบไทยๆ ซึ่งบางครั้งบางอย่างอาจจะดูว่า
เรายังไม่ค่อยถึงไหน แต่หลายอย่างก็ดูจะเดินทางมาไกลมากแล้วจริงๆ
Reflections of the Past: A Collection of Selected Poems from Sattrisan Magazine, 1970 – 1976.
Compiled and edited by Ngampit Jagacinski, Jaruwan Engel, and Tyrell Haberkorn.
Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2013.
Reflections of the Past combines news headlines of events in the 1970’s and individual responses to them in the form of poems to create a lively day-to-day account of Thai history. The selected poems were originally published in Sattrisan magazine between 1970 and 1976. People from every region of Thailand sent in poems as commentary, response, and criticism of the social and political changes sweeping the country. The poems offer a wide range of perspectives from the political left to right and every position in between on topics including farmers, workers, education, corruption, violence, poverty, communism, preferences in life, and natural disasters. The poems are juxtaposed with excerpts from Thai Rat and Prachachat newspapers to provide context for the poems and the changes they foreshadow, document, and reflect. The book is organized chronologically and recurrent issues provide unifying threads.
This new book collects and re-presents these poems to honor the writers’ sharp observations and their witty sense of humor, while permitting readers to develop their own understanding of this period from primary sources. What makes the poems valuable in themselves and as a form of history is that while some of the writers became well-known poets, most of them were ordinary citizens. Issues of concern that are generally not included in the historical record are voiced through them. At a time when Thailand’s recent past is subject to scrutiny and reinterpretation, Reflections of the Past presents these voices in order to recall the diverse and heterogeneous actors involved in making history.
Reflections of the Past will be of interest to all readers concerned with the Thai past and present, the writing of history, and the role of poetry in political and social change. The combination of headline news and poetry offers primary historical data for researchers in the field. This book can also be used as a text for students of Thai to learn to read newspapers and poetry effectively.
งามพิศ จากาซินสกี • จารุวรรณ แอ็งเกิล • ไทเรล ฮาเบอร์คอร์น
รวบรวม
รถติด นํ้าท่วม การเมืองปั่นป่วน เศรษฐกิจไม่ดี แล้วยังมีประท้วงต่อสู้เรียกร้อง ที่โน่นที่นี่อยู่เรื่อย!! ฟังดูแล้วเหมือนเมืองไทยปี ๒๕๕๖ แต่ที่จริงนี่คือชีวิตประจำวันระหว่างปี
๒๕๑๓–๒๕๑๙
หนังสือเล่มนี้รวมบทกวีที่ผู้อ่านทั่วประเทศส่งมาลงใน สตรีสาร นิตยสารที่อยู่คู่เมืองไทยถึง ๔๘ ปี สมัยที่ยังไม่มีทั้งเฟสบุ๊คและเว็บบอร์ด ยามพบเจอะเจออะไรที่อยากจะบ่น ชื่นชม หรือเสียดสี ก็เขียนเป็นกลอนส่งมาลงใน สตรีสาร ได้ ผ่านไปหลายสิบปี การบ่นอย่างมีวาทะศิลป์เหล่านี้ก็กลับกลายเป็น time capsule แห่งอดีต สะท้อนและบันทึกเสียงที่ สด จริง และชัดยิ่งของประชาชนคนธรรมดาๆ ที่พยายามดำรงชีพท่ามกลางความเปลี่ยนแปลงเติบโตของเมือง ความทันสมัย เดือนตุลา ฮิปปี้ อุดมการณ์ และอื่นอีกเหลือที่จะนับได้
การรวบรวมอนุรักษ์กลอนในหนังสือเล่มนี้ทำให้เห็นถึงความน่ารักน่าชัง และความแสบคันแบบไทยๆ ซึ่งบางครั้งบางอย่างอาจจะดูว่า
เรายังไม่ค่อยถึงไหน แต่หลายอย่างก็ดูจะเดินทางมาไกลมากแล้วจริงๆ
Reflections of the Past: A Collection of Selected Poems from Sattrisan Magazine, 1970 – 1976.
Compiled and edited by Ngampit Jagacinski, Jaruwan Engel, and Tyrell Haberkorn.
Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2013.
Reflections of the Past combines news headlines of events in the 1970’s and individual responses to them in the form of poems to create a lively day-to-day account of Thai history. The selected poems were originally published in Sattrisan magazine between 1970 and 1976. People from every region of Thailand sent in poems as commentary, response, and criticism of the social and political changes sweeping the country. The poems offer a wide range of perspectives from the political left to right and every position in between on topics including farmers, workers, education, corruption, violence, poverty, communism, preferences in life, and natural disasters. The poems are juxtaposed with excerpts from Thai Rat and Prachachat newspapers to provide context for the poems and the changes they foreshadow, document, and reflect. The book is organized chronologically and recurrent issues provide unifying threads.
This new book collects and re-presents these poems to honor the writers’ sharp observations and their witty sense of humor, while permitting readers to develop their own understanding of this period from primary sources. What makes the poems valuable in themselves and as a form of history is that while some of the writers became well-known poets, most of them were ordinary citizens. Issues of concern that are generally not included in the historical record are voiced through them. At a time when Thailand’s recent past is subject to scrutiny and reinterpretation, Reflections of the Past presents these voices in order to recall the diverse and heterogeneous actors involved in making history.
Reflections of the Past will be of interest to all readers concerned with the Thai past and present, the writing of history, and the role of poetry in political and social change. The combination of headline news and poetry offers primary historical data for researchers in the field. This book can also be used as a text for students of Thai to learn to read newspapers and poetry effectively.
Research Interests:
In Unspeakable Things" ["สิ่งที่แตะต้องไม่ได้"], we (Ben Tausig and Tyrell Haberkorn, editors, and six other authors) explore Thai politics through everyday objects. Both Thai and foreign analysts are limited in what we can say directly,... more
In Unspeakable Things" ["สิ่งที่แตะต้องไม่ได้"], we (Ben Tausig and Tyrell Haberkorn, editors, and six other authors) explore Thai politics through everyday objects. Both Thai and foreign analysts are limited in what we can say directly, so we turn to objects as a strategy of dissident analysis. We began this project as the one-year anniversary of the April-May 2010 violent crackdown by Thai state forces on red shirt protestors passed. We finished as the second anniversary of the crackdown dawns with accountability still elusive. This series was also launched at a time when the number of people convicted of violations of Article 112 and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act shoes was high and showed no signs of abating [a condition that is still true]. Each piece in this series combines different media forms to create a layered, interactive collage of words, images, video, and sound. Topics addressed include political music and protest, dissident prisoners, risky speech, and beloved animals of elite figures.
Research Interests:
Tyrell Haberkorn. 2018. “Dictatorship, Monarchy and Freedom of Expression in Thailand.” Journal of Asian
Studies 77.4 (November): 935-943.
Studies 77.4 (November): 935-943.
Research Interests:
Tyrell Haberkorn. 2018. “Towards an Intellectual Agenda Against Dictatorship.” In Democracy, Constitution and Human Rights: Festschrift in Honour of Warawit Kanithasen. Edited by Ingwar Ebsen, Dirk Ehlers, and Henning Glaser. Bangkok:... more
Tyrell Haberkorn. 2018. “Towards an Intellectual Agenda Against Dictatorship.” In Democracy, Constitution and Human Rights: Festschrift in Honour of Warawit Kanithasen. Edited by Ingwar Ebsen, Dirk Ehlers, and Henning Glaser. Bangkok: German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance. Pages 372-379.
Research Interests:
Tyrell Haberkorn. 2020. “Putting the National Council for Peace and Order on Trial.” In Coup, King, Crisis: Time of a Dangerous Interregnum in Thailand. Edited by Pavin Chachavalpongpun. New Haven: Yale University Center for Southeast... more
Tyrell Haberkorn. 2020. “Putting the National Council for Peace and Order on Trial.” In Coup, King, Crisis: Time of a Dangerous Interregnum in Thailand. Edited by Pavin Chachavalpongpun. New Haven: Yale University Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Pages 299-318.
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Tyrell Haberkorn. 2021. “Without Account: Coups, Amnesties and Justice in Thailand.” In Thai Legal History: From Traditional to Modern Law. Edited by Andrew Harding and Munin Pongsapan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pages 265-278.
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Tyrell Haberkorn. 2021. “Justice After Dictatorship in Thailand.” In Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945: Case Studies from Six Countries. Edited by Eve Zucker and Ben Kiernan. London: Routledge. Pages 209-221.
Research Interests:
Since the end of the absolute monarchy in Thailand on June 24, 1932, the rulers and the ruled have been locked into struggle, often violent, over what form the polity and the people's participation in it should take. This essay examines... more
Since the end of the absolute monarchy in Thailand on June 24, 1932, the rulers and the ruled have been locked into struggle, often violent, over what form the polity and the people's participation in it should take. This essay examines this struggle, the imagination of justice, and the inability to consolidate democracy, or even a stable government, through the lens of the monarchy, which has remained beyond accountability. Violence committed to preserve the monarchy forecloses democracy and fosters a form of what can be called modern absolutist monarchy, when some lives are visibly placed beyond the law's protection from violence and others are made dispensable by being made subject to repressive enforcement of the law. The emergence in 2020 of a daring challenge to the position of the monarchy beyond the law refracts both the dangers it poses to democracy and the urgency of imagining a new Thai polity.
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On October 6, 1976, state and para-state forces carried out a massacre of students at Thammasat University. That evening, a coup by a junta calling itself the National Administrative Reform Council (NARC) ended nearly three years of... more
On October 6, 1976, state and para-state forces carried out a massacre of students at Thammasat University. That evening, a coup by a junta calling itself the National Administrative Reform Council (NARC) ended nearly three years of democracy and returned the country to dictatorship. The immediate precursor to the massacre was the accusation that the students had performed a play depicting a mock hanging of the crown prince. The allegation of lèse majesté provided those who carried out the massacre with protection from punishment at the time. The combination of the ongoing lèse majesté regime and ingrained impunity for state violence further means that no one has been held responsible for the massacre up to the present and even raising questions about culpability risks running afoul of the law. The fortieth anniversary of the massacre in October 2016 took place under another military regime, that of a junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which came to power following a coup on May 22, 2014, and only a week before the death of King Bhumipol Adulyadej, then the world’s longest-reigning monarch. This article reflects on the commemoration of the massacre under dictatorship, examines the shifting meaning of the massacre for a new generation, and considers the urgency of the demand for the recognition of humanity in the face of ongoing impunity.
Research Interests:
Work done internationally to address impunity concentrates on removing blanket amnesties and establishing commissions of inquiry into past atrocities. Everyday impunity—the impossibility of bringing state officers to account for... more
Work done internationally to address impunity concentrates on removing blanket amnesties and establishing commissions of inquiry into past atrocities. Everyday impunity—the impossibility of bringing state officers to account for routinized violent crimes against other individuals—gets less attention, even though its effects on public life are insidious. Studying the 2014 killing of a journalist, we identify modes for the production of everyday impunity in Myanmar that emerge from earlier periods of unmediated military rule but that today are coming to resemble practices in neighbouring countries. Accounts from Bangladesh and Thailand reveal how impunity can persist in new political conditions, producing insecurity and hampering efforts for more inclusive forms of government. We close by urging scholars to remain attentive to their responsibilities in the face of impunity, calling on them not to participate in projects that have the effect of concealing violent crime by state officers, and denying victims justice.
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There were two, not one, amnesty laws passed in relation to the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University and coup in Thailand. The first amnesty law, passed on 24 December 1976, legalized the coup and prevented those who created... more
There were two, not one, amnesty laws passed in relation to the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University and coup in Thailand. The first amnesty law, passed on 24 December 1976, legalized the coup and prevented those who created the conditions for the coup and seized power on the evening of 6 October from being held to account. The second amnesty law, passed on 16 September 1978, freed eighteen student activists still undergoing criminal prosecution and dismissed the charges against them. Although neither amnesty mentioned the massacre, the urgency of producing and then safeguarding impunity for the state and para-state actors behind the violence at Thammasat was the absent presence in both laws. Combining a close reading of both laws with examination of archival documents about the drafting of the first amnesty law and court and other records related to the second, this article uncovers the hidden transcripts of both amnesty laws as a point of departure for examining questions about impunity, law, and history. First, what are the legal mechanics through which violent actors escape accountability? Second, what are the legal and political functions of amnesty when no crime has been committed? Third and finally, might accountability for past violence be possible, and if so, under what conditions? The answers to these questions illuminate how impunity was produced in the specific case of the 6 October 1976 massacre in Thailand as well as address broader concerns about impunity's role in state formation.
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A primer on freedom of thought in post-coup Thailand.
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On 5 April 1951, Ethel Rosenberg was sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring to commit espionage and sell U.S. atomic information to the Soviet Union. On 28 August 2009, Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was sentenced to eighteen years in... more
On 5 April 1951, Ethel Rosenberg was sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring to commit espionage and sell U.S. atomic information to the Soviet Union. On 28 August 2009, Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for allegedly insulting the royal family of Thailand. By bringing the suffering and courageous actions of these two women into conversation across time and space, the nature of national crisis and the impossibility of loyal dissent in the Cold War United States and late reign Rama IX Thailand are refracted and made acutely visible. Taking the disjuncture between the severity of the charges and the paucity of the evidence presented as a point of departure, this article interrogates the legal instruments under which Ethel Rosenberg and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul were charged, namely the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 and Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, the logic of the courts which convicted them, and the public discourse surrounding both trials. Developing sedition as a lens of comparison and a strategy of analysis, their actions are examined as transgressive in three intersecting and overlapping registers: law, dissent in excess of the law, and gender performance. A fourth register of sedition – scholarly work that aims to be seditious – offers the possibility of challenging the strictures of crisis in which dehumanizing and disproportionate punishment, such as that experienced by Ethel Rosenberg and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul, becomes possible.
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On 19 March 2008, Imam Yapa Kaseng was arrested and detained as a suspected insurgent by Special Task Force 39 in Narathiwat under the provisions of martial law and the Emergency Decree On Public Administration in an Emergency Situation... more
On 19 March 2008, Imam Yapa Kaseng was arrested and detained as a suspected insurgent by Special Task Force 39 in Narathiwat under the provisions of martial law and the Emergency Decree On Public Administration in an Emergency Situation (“Emergency Decree”). Two days after his arrest, he died in custody of the Army. On 25 December 2008, the Narathiwat Provincial Court ruled that “The cause of death is that the deceased was physically assaulted by state officials …while he was in the custody of soldiers who were performing their civil service duties.” This ruling is paradoxical: Thai state officials are named as responsible for a death in custody, yet torture is categorized as a “duty.” Since the ruling, Imam Yapa’s family has pursued criminal, civil, and internal state methods of redress, but the case has been stalled and the responsible state officials have not been held accountable. In response, I challenge this paradox by reading the inquest decision both in light of relevant national and international legal instruments and the testimonies given during the hearings. Drawing on the testimonies given during the inquest hearings, I construct an alternative narrative of suffering and state accountability.
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This research note outlines a series of questions about conducting research on state violence and human rights in Thailand. Taking as a central problem the recurrence of state violence across regimes both dictatorial and democratic in... more
This research note outlines a series of questions about conducting research on state violence and human rights in Thailand. Taking as a central problem the recurrence of state violence across regimes both dictatorial and democratic in the 80 years since the end of the absolute monarchy, I argue that the failure to secure accountability for state violence can productively be placed at the center of researching and writing about modern Thai history. Unevenness is common both to the attempts to secure state accountability for state violence and to the available archival and other sources for writing histories of such violence. This research note examines the particular methodological and analytical difficulties and productive possibilities presented by the partial attempts and failures to secure state accountability and the equally partial available documentation of state violence.
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This article examines the struggle for land tenancy reform and the assassination of Farmers' Federation of Thailand (FFT) leaders in northern Thailand during the period of democratic politics between 14 October 1973 and 6 October 1976 as... more
This article examines the struggle for land tenancy reform and the assassination of Farmers' Federation of Thailand (FFT) leaders in northern Thailand during the period of democratic politics between 14 October 1973 and 6 October 1976 as unresolved, ambiguous, and linked events in the recent Thai past. During the 1973-1976 period, farmers became new political and legal subjects as they fought to pass and then implement the 1974 Land Rent Control Act. Drawing on provincial archival records, the author contextualizes how and why tenancy became a contentious issue between farmers and landlords beginning in the 1950s and then examines the anxious and violent backlash with which their organizing in the 1970s was met by state, para-state, right-wing, and landholding elites. The author interrogates the conditions and effects of the assassinations by writing about the life and death of one of the leaders of the FFT, Intha Sribunruang. The denials by a range of state officials of the political nature of Intha and other FFT leaders' murders underscore both the importance of the FFT's work and the necessity to critically evaluate the assassinations. The author concludes by arguing that the lack of resolution surrounding the struggle for tenancy reform and the assassinations of FFT leaders continues to resonate in present-day politics. An Appendix to the article offers the first English-language list of the FFT leaders known to have been killed or victimized by violence between 1974 and 1979.
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"Born into a wealthy Bangkok family in 1917, Ajarn Angun Malik was one of the first professors in the Faculty of Humanities when Chiang Mai University (CMU) opened in 1964. Ajarn Angun’s house and garden in Chiang Mai, Suan Anya, or Anya... more
"Born into a wealthy Bangkok family in 1917, Ajarn Angun Malik was one of the first professors in the Faculty of Humanities when Chiang Mai University (CMU) opened in 1964. Ajarn Angun’s house and garden in Chiang Mai, Suan Anya, or Anya Garden, was mentioned as the site of many activist organizing meetings, communal living, as well as a place of shelter for student and farmer activists fleeing state and para-state forces after the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup. After the massacre, she chose not to flee to the jungle to join the CPT because she viewed her actions as being in the service of justice; some state officials perceived differently and she was arrested and detained as “a danger to society” for ninety days at the Karunyathep Center in Chiang Mai. Ajarn Angun’s significant material generosity supported and facilitated many different social justice projects, during here time in Chiang Mai as well as after she retired from civil service and returned to Bangkok.
Between December 2003 and August 2005, I collected seven cremation and commemoration volumes about Ajarn Angun’s life. Her name came up in every interview about progressive activist in the 1970s that I conducted with former student and farmer activists, professors, CMU staff, and others. Most striking were the accounts of the intangible roles Ajarn Angun played in her students’ and colleagues’ lives. Many people sited her life as the example that either propelled them towards activism, or helped sustain their commitment to justice.
Yet, despite her clear and multifaceted role, she is not mentioned in any of the histories about political activism or movements in the 1970s outside of the books published in her honor. While part of the explanation to why Ajarn Angun is absent is the sheer recognition that this period has yet to be fully treated academically, thornier issues complicate her inclusion. The more I learned about her life, the more important to political history, or the history of how people struggle to contest the ruling order, and how the ruling order responds, she seemed. Her material support of activist groups was critical to their work, her maverick teaching and classroom dress stood in opposition to the entrenched order, and her personal example facilitated and enlivened the farmer and student movements in Chiang Mai in the mid-1970s. In this article I argue that the very definition, and gendering, of politics is at stake here. While tracing the ambivalent place of Ajarn Angun in recent Thai history, I develop a new conception of politics capable of accounting for the multiple sites and varied ways that individuals change their lives and join with others to change society."
Between December 2003 and August 2005, I collected seven cremation and commemoration volumes about Ajarn Angun’s life. Her name came up in every interview about progressive activist in the 1970s that I conducted with former student and farmer activists, professors, CMU staff, and others. Most striking were the accounts of the intangible roles Ajarn Angun played in her students’ and colleagues’ lives. Many people sited her life as the example that either propelled them towards activism, or helped sustain their commitment to justice.
Yet, despite her clear and multifaceted role, she is not mentioned in any of the histories about political activism or movements in the 1970s outside of the books published in her honor. While part of the explanation to why Ajarn Angun is absent is the sheer recognition that this period has yet to be fully treated academically, thornier issues complicate her inclusion. The more I learned about her life, the more important to political history, or the history of how people struggle to contest the ruling order, and how the ruling order responds, she seemed. Her material support of activist groups was critical to their work, her maverick teaching and classroom dress stood in opposition to the entrenched order, and her personal example facilitated and enlivened the farmer and student movements in Chiang Mai in the mid-1970s. In this article I argue that the very definition, and gendering, of politics is at stake here. While tracing the ambivalent place of Ajarn Angun in recent Thai history, I develop a new conception of politics capable of accounting for the multiple sites and varied ways that individuals change their lives and join with others to change society."
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Since the May 2014 coup, the junta has leaned on the law to impose the worst repression in Thailand since the 1970s. Opposition activists are fighting back in the courts.
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Part of 'The Wheel of Crisis in Thailand' collection for _Cultural Anthropology_.
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Also published in the print version of East Asia Forum, Volume 3, Number 4 (October -- December 2011).
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Three women, three continents, three foreclosures of justice. Ethel Rosenberg was convicted of alleged conspiracy to sell atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and commit espionage against the United States on 5 April 1951. She was executed... more
Three women, three continents, three foreclosures of justice. Ethel Rosenberg was convicted of alleged conspiracy to sell atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and commit espionage against the United States on 5 April 1951. She was executed on 19 June 1953, despite her claim of innocence and the U.S. federal government’s secret knowledge that this claim was true. Ruth First was detained in 1963 for 117 days under the 90-Day Detention Law in South Africa, which permitted the arbitrary, potentially infinite detention of anyone who had committed, or might commit, an act deemed to be dangerous to the state. She was killed in exile in Mozambique on 17 August 1982, when she opened a letter bomb prepared and sent to her by the South African Special Branch Police. Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul was convicted of allegedly defaming the Thai monarchy on 28 August 2009 and is currently serving a 15-year sentence. She pled innocent, claiming that although she uttered the words cited in the accusation, that did not mean that she was disloyal to the monarchy.
Sisters in Sedition is a dramatic response to the suffering and courage present in the lives, and in the case of Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth First, deaths, of these three women. In a series of three acts, the play moves backward in time, from twenty-first century Thailand to South Africa in the 1960s and finally to the United States in the 1950s. Despite being convicted or detained under very different laws, Ethel Rosenberg, Ruth First, and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul were all explicitly accused of disloyalty to the nation, or sedition. Implicitly, they were each persecuted for defying gendered norms of propriety. As the three women enter each other’s lives, a history of both repression and the daring to confront injustice unfolds across time and space. As witnesses to their encounter, readers are invited to consider the constriction of liberty during national crises, the limits of justice in the hands of the state, and the urgency of freedom.
In this paper, I reflect on the process of writing Sisters in Sedition and consider the possibility of drama as a form of response to repression. Unlike biography, in which the author is the primary interlocutor, in Sisters in Sedition, the life stories of the three women are told as they engage one another directly. The comparison, then, emerges from their conversations with each other, and the similarities and differences are cast in sharp relief. Through the lens of writing a play which crosses three continents and sixty years, I consider the necessity and challenges of the practice of comparison across seemingly disparate times and spaces.
Sisters in Sedition is a dramatic response to the suffering and courage present in the lives, and in the case of Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth First, deaths, of these three women. In a series of three acts, the play moves backward in time, from twenty-first century Thailand to South Africa in the 1960s and finally to the United States in the 1950s. Despite being convicted or detained under very different laws, Ethel Rosenberg, Ruth First, and Daranee Charnchoengsilpakul were all explicitly accused of disloyalty to the nation, or sedition. Implicitly, they were each persecuted for defying gendered norms of propriety. As the three women enter each other’s lives, a history of both repression and the daring to confront injustice unfolds across time and space. As witnesses to their encounter, readers are invited to consider the constriction of liberty during national crises, the limits of justice in the hands of the state, and the urgency of freedom.
In this paper, I reflect on the process of writing Sisters in Sedition and consider the possibility of drama as a form of response to repression. Unlike biography, in which the author is the primary interlocutor, in Sisters in Sedition, the life stories of the three women are told as they engage one another directly. The comparison, then, emerges from their conversations with each other, and the similarities and differences are cast in sharp relief. Through the lens of writing a play which crosses three continents and sixty years, I consider the necessity and challenges of the practice of comparison across seemingly disparate times and spaces.
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The six years since the 19 September 2006 coup in Thailand has been marked by tremendous overt violence towards dissenting actors, notably during April-May 2010, and repression of challenging political speech, most clearly indicated by... more
The six years since the 19 September 2006 coup in Thailand has been marked by tremendous overt violence towards dissenting actors, notably during April-May 2010, and repression of challenging political speech, most clearly indicated by the exponential rise in charges filed and cases prosecuted under Article 112 of the Criminal Code and the 2007 Computer Crimes Act. Yet remarkably amidst the repression of these six years, progressive journals and publishing houses (Fa Diew Kan, Aan, Between The Lines, Typhoon, etc.) and bookstores (Candide, Book Re:public, etc.) have flourished. A new generation of dissident writers has emerged, whose poems, novels, and alternate accounts of the last six years directly challenge the coup and the oppression that has followed in its wake. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s assessment that, “In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility made real,” this paper will offer a critical analysis of testimonies of the violence of 10 April 2010, the poetry of Anon Numpa and Phiengkham Pradapkhwam, and an alternate Mother's Day video, in order to trace the possibilities and limits of dissent in present-day Thailand. Cultural politics, here, are then read as both a source and a form of history. In particular, I will trace the conceptions of justice, the risky and nearly illegal forms of speech deployed, and the forms of compassion present in these works to understand both this growing wave of new writers and the society and politics in which they intervene.
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"In February 1975, student activists exposed a series of brutal murders of citizens by Communist Suppression Operations Command and other state security forces that had taken place two-and-a-half years earlier in Phatthalung province in... more
"In February 1975, student activists exposed a series of brutal murders of citizens by Communist Suppression Operations Command and other state security forces that had taken place two-and-a-half years earlier in Phatthalung province in mid-southern Thailand. The thang daeng, or ‘red drum,’ killings gained their name from the method of killing employed. Accused of engaging in Communist activities, or tacit support for them, citizens were arrested, or simply taken, in large sweeps across districts throughout the province and brought to detention camps for interrogation. At night, after being beaten until unconscious or with irons around one’s neck, individual citizens were placed into empty 200-liter oil drums at the edge of the detention camps, doused in oil, and then burned alive. Villagers and students estimated that several thousand people in Phatthalung, perhaps as many as 3,000, were killed as alleged Communists in the manner.
The exposure of the killings, and surrounding protests, led to an official investigation by the Ministry of Interior. Despite finding evidence that state actors had killed citizens in thang daeng, the Ministry chose not to hold anyone accountable, for fear that doing so would discourage state actors in their important counterinsurgency work. This paper takes the thang daeng killings in 1972, while Thailand was under dictatorship, and their public exposure in 1975, during a brief interlude of open politics between two periods of dictatorship, as a point of departure to examine questions about impunity, justice, and state historiographic and archiving practices."
The exposure of the killings, and surrounding protests, led to an official investigation by the Ministry of Interior. Despite finding evidence that state actors had killed citizens in thang daeng, the Ministry chose not to hold anyone accountable, for fear that doing so would discourage state actors in their important counterinsurgency work. This paper takes the thang daeng killings in 1972, while Thailand was under dictatorship, and their public exposure in 1975, during a brief interlude of open politics between two periods of dictatorship, as a point of departure to examine questions about impunity, justice, and state historiographic and archiving practices."
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Research Interests: Thailand, Exile, Burma, Material Culture, Refugees, and 3 moreTyrell Haberkorn, Sandra Dudley, and Karenni
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This is my 2007 PhD dissertation from Cornell University. It is also an early draft of what became _Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). Two of... more
This is my 2007 PhD dissertation from Cornell University. It is also an early draft of what became _Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law, and Violence in Northern Thailand_ (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). Two of the chapters did not make it into the book -- Chapter 2, which is about the 14 October 1973 events in Chiang Mai, and the final chapter, which is about arbitrary detention of those deemed a 'danger to society' in Chiang Mai following the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup.