'War-on-terror' Frames of Remembrance: The 1985 Air India Bombings After 9/11

Accepted versionThis paper critically analyzes Canadian filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson’s documentary Air India 182 in light of recent official efforts to remember and redress the 1985 Air India bombings. The author argues that the film, in line with official efforts, constructs a narrative of the bombings through a “war on terror” framing of remembrance that is at once specific to the recircuitries of race produced in the anxious aftermath of 9/11, and consistent with historically rooted operations of xenophobia and colonial power. The significance of such a framing is that it works not only to shape memory of the bombings as a certain kind of event (one with unambiguous perpetrators, victims and damages), it narrows the field of what are imagined as possible actions toward redressing or compensating for its losses. In other words, a war-on-terror framing of remembrance, as a discursive strategy or approach to “remembering” the bombings, limits the potential for a complex understanding of the politics out of which this event arose, restricting public debate over the kinds of responses that continue to be generated in its aftermath. Moreover, a war-on-terror framing of remembrance is understood here to employ neoliberal and settler-colonialist discourses of productive futurity and multicultural tolerance to make remembrance of the bombings concomitant with the construction of turbaned Sikhs and other racially and religiously minoritized citizens as “dangerous internal foreigners.” As such, this paper bears implications beyond the documentary film, including the consequences of neoliberalism for the formation of public memory and for the making of race and nation in Canada. / Cet article analyse de façon critique le documentaire Air India 182 du cinéaste canadien Sturla Gunnarsson à la lumière des récents efforts officiels de commémorer et de réparer l’attentat à la bombe du vol d’Air India en 1985. L’auteur soutient que le film, en accord avec les efforts officiels, élabore un récit des attentats par le biais d’un cadre de commémoration emprunté à la « guerre contre la terreur, » qui est à la fois propre aux redéfinitions de la race suscitées par l’angoisse à la suite de 9/11, et conforme aux opérations de xénophobie et de puissance coloniale historiques. L’importance d’un tel cadre est qu’il fonctionne non seulement pour façonner le souvenir des attentats comme un certain type d’évènement (dont il n’y a aucune ambigüité quant aux auteurs, victimes et indemnités), mais il restreint le champ de ce que l’on imagine comme des actions possibles visant la réparation ou la compensation pour ces pertes. Autrement dit, en empruntant le cadre de commémoration de la « guerre contre la terreur », en tant que stratégie discursive ou approche à la « remémoration » des attentats à la bombe, on limite le potentiel pour une compréhension approfondie de la politique de laquelle cet événement a émané, restreignant le débat public sur les types de réponses qu’il continue à susciter. De plus, le cadre « guerre contre la terreur » de la commémoration est entendu ici comme employant des discours d’avenir productif et de tolérance multiculturelle appartenant au néolibéralisme et à la colonie de peuplements pour rendre la commémoration des attentats concomitante avec la construction du Sikh à turban et d’autres citoyens minoritisés aux niveaux racial et religieux en tant que des « étrangers internes dangereux. » Comme tel, la portée de cet article va au-delà du documentaire, incluant les conséquences du néolibéralisme pour la formation de la mémoire publique ainsi que l’élaboration de la race et la nation au Canada."Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has also made research for this article possible."https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/topia.27.25

Remembering the Air India disaster: Memorial and counter-memorial

Accepted version of manuscrip

Narrative Skin Repair: Bearing Witness to Representations of Self-Harm

https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/986

Canada 150: Exhibiting National Memory at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Accepted version of manuscriptThis paper features an analysis of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) and its showcase for ‘Canada 150’, the sesquicentennial anniversary of Canadian Confederation. Particular attention is paid to how the Museum frames national memory, and its responsiveness (or lack thereof) to critiques and re-framings of Canada 150 by Indigenous artists, activists, historians and community leaders. Since opening to the public in 2014, the CMHR has had a mixed reception, including criticism for inadequately addressing Canada’s colonial past and present, privileging narratives of state benevolence and downplaying ‘missteps’ when it comes to Canada’s own human rights and Indigenous rights record. Recognizing that national museums have long served the colonial project of state formation and official memory, this paper nonetheless tries to notice potential openings for decolonizing or unsettling Canada 150 at the CMHR. Shoal Lake 40 First Nation’s Museum of Canadian Human Rights Violations is taken up as a counter example

Excitable speech: Judith Butler, Mae West and sexual innuendo

Accepted version of manuscriptWorking with Judith Butler's Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, this essay pursues a series of questions on the performativity of speech acts, using sexual innuendo as an example. As performed by the provocative American playwright and classic Hollywood film star, Mae West, sexual innuendo provides an instance of “excitable speech” that allows for the exploration of speech as a site of political resistance. The questions that frame this discussion are as follows: How are vulnerability and agency produced in speech? What are the foreclosures or censors at work in producing speech and the speaking subject? What constitutes the “force” of the performative speech act? How is the speech act repeatable? And do these conditions leave room for Butler's notion of linguistic agency, where the speech act works to undermine linguistic conventions through resignification? Finally, the essay offers queer readings of Mae West in order to demonstrate the concept of “discursive performativity,” which underpins Butler's argument.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:101018990690

‘An Amazing Gift’? Memory Entrepreneurship, Settler Colonialism and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Accepted version of manuscriptDrawing on research undertaken at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this article considers the role of memory entrepreneurship in the museum’s historic launch and in a sampling of its content, social media posts, points of sale and marketing campaigns. These examples are read in tension with Roger I. Simon’s conceptualization of ‘the terrible gift’ of what we come to know belatedly about events of mass violence, which calls into question the consolatory promises of learning from ‘those who came before us’ and the ‘lessons of their lives’. The museum’s involvement in the City of Winnipeg’s tourism initiatives and the revitalization of Winnipeg’s downtown are also considered, and we suggest that the museum’s participation in the creative economy might affect its tendency to situate human rights violations primarily in the past. Critiques of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ present occupation of Indigenous land and the museum (and City of Winnipeg)’s ongoing reliance on natural resources extracted at the expense of Indigenous communities remain as difficult or inassimilable knowledge. Juxtaposing Indigenous, cultural and economic critiques with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ advancement of memory entrepreneurship, our article explores the inter-implication of consumer culture, capitalism, settler colonialism and the museum’s ability to contribute to societal change. We conclude by turning to the activism of members of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, arguing that their calls for access to safe water and an all-season road in and out of their community pose both an economic and a political challenge to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and its brand of memory entrepreneurship by insisting that gestures to include and proffer representational forms of recognition to Indigenous peoples must simultaneously attend to sovereigntist calls for redistribution of land and resources in order to meaningfully address the historical and ongoing injustices of settler colonialism.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/175069801984397

The Art of Public Mourning: An Introduction

Postprint version