Special Issue of West Coast Line 53:Representations of Murdered and Missing Women.

Prefatory Remarks

To tell the truth, I didn’t want to work on this special issue on representations of murdered and missing women.

The idea terrified me.

To take such a sustained look, in a Vancouver-based publication, at an issue that is – especially in this city – so raw, so present, so painful, seemed like a terribly fraught, even dangerous, undertaking.

And maybe it remains so.

But as I read the draft of the call for papers that Anne Stone had prepared, her questions drew me in. I couldn’t help but add some of my own. I felt at once a strong pull to turn away and a pressing need to respond. So much of my writing about women who’ve been murdered goes like this: I’d rather not think, read or write about it, rather not try to fathom or confront the enormity of these losses, but I can’t seem not to, either.

My biggest worry about working on this special issue stems from my far-from-resolved concerns about the ethics of critiquing memorials or other personal and well-intentioned artistic responses to murdered and missing women. There is a way in which any critique of a memorial in particular seems almost unethical, since they are so often created by or hold special meaning for those in close proximity to the losses they mark. A handful of challenging and at times intensely painful conversations with friends and family of murdered women about the merits – or lack thereof – of my own critiques of some of the memorials discussed in this issue have left me with many unanswered questions about the ethics of such critical practice. But I am also uncomfortable with an easy equation of critique with betrayal, for it seems to me that critique can be a way of caring for, or enriching, or expressing concern for our subject. [FOOTNOTE 1] This is certainly the spirit in which Kara Granzow and I offer our critique in this issue) of Femke van Delft’s Missing: A Guerrilla Mapping Project, an artistic response to the disappearances of women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It is a recognition of this project’s importance and a desire to support van Delft’s political aims for the piece that drive our critical response.

After reading the numerous submissions we received for this issue, I am no closer to having definitive answers for any of the questions I started with. But the authors who submitted their work have engaged me in deep reflection on them. And this, I think, is far more satisfying, far more appropriate, far more ethical an outcome than attempts to offer any definite answers. More than anything, I hope that the work collected here will spark dialogue and debate – and leave you with more questions.

-- Amber Dean