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This article foregrounds questions of memorialization in regard to the 1989 murder of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. Such questions are played out with specific reference to how this event is (being) remembered/forgotten through the practice(s) of feminist memorial vigils. The author ends by tracing concerns with remembrance of the event of the massacre into the terrain of (feminist) pedagogy.
Cet article met au premier plan des questions de commemoration relatives au meurtre en 1989 de 14 femmes a l'Ecole Polylechnique de Montreal. De telles questions sont examinees en fonction des facons specifiques dont cet evenement est (en train d'etre) commemore/oublie a travers des vigils commemoratifs feministes. L'auteure termine en amenant sur le terrain de la pedagogie (feministe) des soueis souleves concernant la commemoration du massacre.
This is a writing of memory. It is about the memories that come flooding back each December 6 as I stand at memorial vigils shielded against the cold that still manages to seep into my bones, giving way to the tears, the anguish. It is about the formation of historical memory -- how the past is remembered, how a past-present relation is understood, what matters in the now, to whom. It is about how a remembered past might figure in the stakes of present feminist commitments to end endemic violences against women.
Introduction
In the early evening of December 6, 1989, a lone gun man walked the hallways and classrooms of Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, killing 14 women, and injuring 13 others, before turning the gun on himself. A suicide note found on his body blamed women, and specifically feminists, for ruining his life.(f.1)
Since the night of this massacre of women, there have been a myriad of feminist memorial responses, including posters and buttons (MacLennan, 1990), poetry (Kohli, 1991; Lester, 1990), art shows (Don't Remain Silent, 1990, 1991; Murdered by Misogyny, 1990), and video (Bradley, 1995; Rogers, 1991).(f.2) In various ways, each of these representations of remembrance have intervened in and sought to have an effect on, how the killings on December 6 were -- and are -- to be remembered: how they are to be held in collected feminist memories(f.3) in particular and historical memory more generally.
Such remembrance is, however, a contested terrain....