Memes & Memorials: The Digital Politics of Gender Violence and Urban Space

• In Event: Representation of Women in Popular Culture

Abstract

The 1989 Montreal Massacre was the then-largest mass shooting in Canada’s history. Despite state efforts to portray killer Marc Lepine as a “lone gunman”, his suicide note professed his motivation to be political: to kill “feminists” for attending Ecole Polytechnique. Lepine is now considered the first case of “Incel” violence, a decade before the Incel subculture emerged online.

The Montreal Massacre has had a paradoxical afterlife, especially since the emergence of the internet. On the one hand, it is annually memorialized in Quebec, a ritual that feminist theorists such as Andrea Dworkin have criticized for “exceptionalizing” femicide and covering up Lepine’s anti-feminist motivations. Digital forms of memorialization have led to instances such as a gun shop offering discount codes for the memorial, further heightening the paradox between the discourse of exceptionalism and the persistence of femicide in Canada.

On the other hand, Lepine has lived on in the meme culture of Incels, with future perpetrators of Incel-related political violence (Eliot Rodgers, Alexandre Bissonnette, and Alek Minassian) modeling themselves in his image. In this context, Incel memes have perpetuated and intensified gender-based political violence.

Our paper examines these contrasting forms of digital politics as they emerge from the same moment of the Montreal Massacre. We argue that where digital memorialization continues to “exceptionalize” gendered violence, covering up its perpetuation, digital Incel memes have fueled and intensified gender-based violence. We conclude with a discussion of the role these forms of digital politics play in making claims to urban space.

Authors

• Helena Najm, CUNY Graduate Center

• Carmen Caporizzo Melillo, CUNY Graduate Center