Memorializing Violence

Transnational Feminist Reflections

Edited by Alison Crosby and Heather Evans

SERIES: Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights

Rutgers University Press

Memorializing Violence brings together feminist and queer reflections on the transnational lives of memorialization practices, asking what it means to grapple with loss, mourning, grief, and desires to collectively remember and commemorate–as well as urges to forget–in the face of disparate yet entangled experiences of racialized and gendered colonial, imperial, militarized, and state violence. The volume uses a transnational feminist approach to ask, How do such efforts in seemingly unconnected remembrance landscapes speak to, with, and through each other in a world order inflected by colonial, imperial, and neoliberal logics, structures, and strictures? How do these memorializing initiatives not only formulate within but move through complex transnational flows and circuits, and what transpires as they do? What does it mean to inhabit loss, mourning, resistance, and refusal through memorialization at this moment, and what’s at stake in doing so? What might transnational feminist analyses of gender, race, sexuality, class, and nation have to offer in this regard?

Editor
Contents

ALISON CROSBY is an associate professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, York University, Toronto.

HEATHER EVANS is PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto.

Preface
Introduction: A Transnational Feminist Approach to Memorialization
Alison Crosby and Heather Evans
Chapter 1: Tracing Absent Presence
Malathi de Alwis

Part I: The Colonial, Imperial Logics of Memorializing
Chapter 2: Law’s Racial Memory
Carmela Murdocca
Chapter 3: Toward a Queer Diasporic Remembrance of Air India Flight 182: Memorializing Transnational Flows of Loss and Desire
Amber Dean

Part II: Inhabiting Loss, Exceeding the Frame
Chapter 4: “I Am Here for Justice and I Am Here for Change”: Reflections on Anticolonial Remembering within the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada
Karine Duhamel
Chapter 5: Transnational Contestations: Remembering Sexual Violence in Postgenocide Guatemala
Alison Crosby, Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, and María de los Ángeles Aguilar
Chapter 6: Poetics and Politics of Sound Memory and Social Repair in the Afterlives of Mass Violence: The Cantadoras of the Atrato River of Colombia
Pilar Riaño-Alcalá

Part III: Invoking Revolutionary Present Pasts
Chapter 7: Figures of Dissent: Women’s Memoirs of Defiance
Shahrzad Mojab
Chapter 8: Filming Disappearance: An Account of a Visual Battle
Chowra Makaremi
Chapter 9: Dialita Choir: Women Survivors Reclaiming History in Indonesia
Ayu Ratih

Part IV: Care in/as Collective Mourning
Chapter 10: Ceremonies of Mourning, Remembrance, and Care in the Context of Violence: A Conversation about Performing Song for the Beloved
Honor Ford-Smith and Juanita Stephen
Chapter 11: Maternal Activism and the Politics of Memorialization in the Mothers of the Movement: A Black Feminist Reading
Erica S. Lawson and Ola Osman
Chapter 12: The Embroidering for Peace Initiative: Crafting Feminist Politics and Memorializing Resistance to the “War on Drugs” in Mexico
Cordelia Rizzo
Chapter 13: Epigraph 24584 | In Which She Talks to the Dead and Sometimes the Dead Talk Back + artist’s statement, The Dead Talk Back
Charlotte Henay

Part V: On Worlding
Chapter 14: Dreams to Remember: A Conversation on Unsilencing the Archive: An Afronautic Approach
Camille Turner, Mila Mendez, and Heather Evans
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Preface xi
Introduction: A Transnational Feminist Approach to Memorialization 1
ALISON CROSBY AND HEATHER EVANS
1 Tracing Absent Presence 17
MALATHI DE ALWIS
Part I The Colonial, Imperial Logics of Memorializing
2 Law’s Racial Memory 29
CARMELA MURDOCCA
3 Toward a Queer Diasporic Remembrance of Air India Flight 182: Memorializing Transnational Flows of Loss and Desire 43
AMBER DEAN
Part II Inhabiting Loss, Exceeding the Frame
4 “I Am Here for Justice and I Am Here for Change”: Reflections on Anticolonial Remembering within the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada 59
KARINE DUHAMEL
5 Transnational Contestations: Remembering Sexual Violence in Postgenocide Guatemala 72
ALISON CROSBY, IRMA ALICIA VELÁSQUEZ NIMATUJ, AND MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES AGUILAR
6 Poetics and Politics of Sound Memory and Social Repair in the Afterlives of Mass Violence: The Cantadoras of the Atrato River of Colombia 87
PILAR RIAÑO- ALCALÁ
Part III Invoking Revolutionary Present Pasts
7 Figures of Dissent: Women’s Memoirs of Defiance 105
SHAHRZAD MOJAB
8 Filming Disappearance: An Account of a Visual Battle 119
CHOWRA MAKAREMI
9 Dialita Choir: Women Survivors Reclaiming History in Indonesia 130
AYU RATIH
Part IV Care in/as Collective Mourning
10 Ceremonies of Mourning, Remembrance, and Care in the Context of Violence: A Conversation about Performing Song for the Beloved 147
HONOR FORD-SMITH AND JUANITA STEPHEN
11 Maternal Activism and the Politics of Memorialization in the Mothers of the Movement: A Black Feminist Reading 160
ERICA S. LAWSON AND OLA OSMAN
12 The Embroidering for Peace Initiative: Crafting Feminist Politics and Memorializing Resistance to the “War on Drugs” in Mexico 173
CORDELIA RIZZO
13 Epigraph 24584: In Which She Talks to the Dead and Sometimes the Dead Talk Back 187
CHARLOTTE HENAY
14 Dreams to Remember: A Conversation on Unsilencing the Archive: An Afronautic Approach 209
CAMILLE TURNER, MIL A MENDEZ, AND HEATHER EVANS
Acknowledgments 219
References 221
Notes on Contributors 243
Index 000

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