In her article Marks emphasizes the potential volatility of both the fetish and fossil (a quality of all forms of representation). Their initial appearances are deceiving as they “carry within them histories that, once unravelled, make the fixity of the present untenable” (Marks 1999,229). On the surface, these objects may give some clue to the […]

In “Fetishes and Fossils: Notes on Documentary and Materiality,” Laura Marks (1999) offers two metaphors to illustrate how documentaries both fetishize and fossilize their subjects. In this article Marks focuses on the operation of documentary films as intercultural phenomena, where the documentary marks a relationship between cultures. Drawing on the scholarship of William Pietz, Marks […]

Various scholars have written on this notion of presence. Michel Foucault wrote about truth. Jean Baudrillard (1999) talks about the real. Derrida (1996, 438) relates his use of the word “presence” to a string of synonyms—essence, existence, consciousness, the transcendental signified, God, Man—all stand­ing for this fundamental principle, which, he argues, animates traditional Western thinking.7 […]

This complicated story has attracted considerable attention from journalists and documentary filmmakers over the years. There have been several films made on or relating to this subject, including Juarez, The City of Dead Women (1998); Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos (2000); City of Dreams (2001); and Senorita Extraviada: Missing Young Woman (2001).5 In keeping […]

Ciudad Juarez, the largest city in Mexico’s largest state (Chihuahua), is also the fourth largest city in the country. Situated along Mexico’s northern border, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, Juarez is a hub of industrial activ­ity. Its 400 maquiladoras (foreign-owned assembly plants) attract 50,000 new economic migrants each year (Wolff 2002). […]

ZOEY ELOUARD MICHELE [ 3 ] Since 1993 the people of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, have lost more than 300 women to murder. The details of the case are appalling but, sadly, not unique: Canadians, for example, need only think of the as-yet unsolved case of sixty — three women who have gone missing from Vancouver’s […]

While Fran^oise David’s comment cites emotional proximity as a hindrance to claiming a memorial narrative of emblemization, I suggest that this prox­imity may be read, instead, as indicative of how difficult (emotionally, politi­cally, socially, publicly, etc.) yet necessary it is to face Lepine’s accusatory hatred of feminists (feminism) as a reason for murder. Perhaps this […]

While many feminists have put forward an emblematic reading of the mas­sacre, other feminists have long argued that this is a reading that prioritizes identity politics and gendered power relations at the expense of recognizing complex identity formations and inseparable relations of power—such as “race,” class, and sexuality—which shape the meanings of gender for women […]

In the immediate aftermath of the killings, and during the early anniversary years, there was enormous debate in the mainstream media regarding how to make sense of Lepine and his actions. The interpretation circulating widely in the media within hours of the killings constituted the murders as “incompre­hensible” (in Lakeman 1992, 94), “one man’s act […]

Gun control legislation, efforts to increase the number of women in engineer­ing programs, and the design of monuments7 can be readily understood as strategic remembrance practices—practices that tie the legacy of the Mon­treal massacre into contemporary political efforts to achieve a redeemed future. Indeed, such practices are easy to identify as having helped “us” move […]