Grant, JennaRost, Ben2023-08-142023-08-142023-08-142023Rost_washington_0250O_25394.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1773/50147Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2023This thesis considers the roles played by the Khmer language as a medium and idiom through which generations of Cambodian scholars, authors, intellectuals, religious and civil officials, and others, extending from the opening decades of the twentieth century through to the contemporary era, have delineated and contested the contours of national community and identity. Across diverse social, political, and historical landscapes, I argue, language, from its orthographic conventions to its literary traditions, has remained a central site of engagement through which generations of Cambodians have negotiated and mediated experiences of modernity and postcoloniality, and imagined and articulated possible and alternative futures for the Cambodian nation. This work is not intended to be read as an exhaustive examination of such themes, but rather emphasizes a close reading of an assemblage of individual texts, ranging from linguistic studies and a well-known dictionary to novels and blog posts, alongside a careful consideration of their historical contexts, for their insights into the varied and dynamic ways in which the Khmer language has been deeply implicated in successive projects of imagining the Cambodian nation, particularly those carried out both by and contra oppressive regimes of power. I draw on the historical and conceptual journeys traced by such works as threads that bind together a broader discussion of the social and political horizons unfolded – and foreclosed – through discursive engagements with language and literature. I situate this thesis within a genealogy of studies of national imaginaries, particularly as critiqued and theorized by a range of postcolonial scholars. I draw inspiration from several scholars who have expanded our understandings of literature, across diverse national contexts, as a critical discursive space in which debates around national identity, de- and postcoloniality, and modernity have been held. Finally, I position this thesis in conversation with an assemblage of feminist historians and theorists whose works, taken together, encourage a critical inquiry into the logics of inclusion and exclusion that enable the formulation, consolidation, and naturalization of the ‘nation.’ Placed alongside one another, such diverse and varied discourses allow for a consideration of the ways in which language simultaneously both naturalizes and destabilizes social and political categories and relations, thereby highlighting the ways in which history continues to do work in the present and unfolding the possibility of more liberatory futures, in ways that add depth and nuance to our readings of the works and authors considered in this study. Ultimately, I conclude that, despite efforts to fix it in time and place, language has instead endured as a destabilizing force, as its fluidity forever unfolds the space in which to reformulate, refashion, and redefine. From the opening of the twentieth century through to the present day, the Khmer language has endured as a critical site of negotiation and mediation, allowing for the continual making and remaking of the Cambodian nation, as successive generations confront the ever-urgent questions of being and belonging in the modern world.application/pdfen-USCC BY-NC-NDCambodiaKhmerLanguageLiteratureNationalismSociolinguisticsSoutheast Asian studiesThesis