Media Ruins: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology by Margaret Jack (review).

"Media Ruins: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology" by Margaret Jack is a book that challenges common depictions of Cambodia as a broken and corrupt country. Jack explores the historical relationships between media infrastructures and Cambodia's transitions and conflicts, emphasizing contingency and Cambodian agency. The book engages with memory studies, postconflict responses, and histories of Cambodia's recovery from the Khmer Rouge genocide. Jack introduces the concept of "infrastructural restitution" to describe the restoration and reconstruction of media artifacts, highlighting the affective and political dimensions of this work. The book also examines the concept of "disintegration noise," which refers to the physical decay and gaps in restored media that simultaneously reveal and obscure the past. Overall, "Media Ruins" offers a nuanced understanding of Cambodia's media history and its complex relationship with memory and reconstruction. [Extracted from the article]