Citation

McNeill L. Can. Rev. Am. Stud. 2008; 38(3): 375-398.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, University of Toronto Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In this study, I focus on memorial responses to two crimes, the Montreal Massacre and Vancouver's so-called "Missing Women" serial killings, both large-scale, very public acts of violence targeted specifically at women. Comparing the memorializing of these mass murders, I analyse the complexities and the possibilities of contemporary memorial rhetoric and the issues of accessibility and legibility it raises; the gap between official and marginalized mourners (and victims) evident in these case studies stands as both a means of maintaining the status quo and an opportunity for resistance to these norms. Looking at particular commemorative acts, I explore how traumatic deaths-and the lives behind them-are remembered by the survivors, their communities, and the nation at large. Because memorials in their sundry forms bring together individual and public grief, personal and collective memory, and, in so doing, determine whose lives count to the community, they provide rich subject matter for analysing how death and life together contribute to auto/biographical identities and narratives.