Captivity in Three Acts: Montreal Toponymy and The Politics of Commemorating Marie Angélique

• In-person event

• Contact
• CAP2023@carleton.ca

Please join us for the keynote event of the Capillary Critical Geography Network’s inaugural conference.

Captivity in Three Acts: Montreal Toponymy and The Politics of Commemorating Marie Angélique
Délice Mugabo, University of Ottawa

This talk examines recent commemorative sites honoring Angélique and the project to name a street after her. I argue that these strategies of inserting Angélique into the founding story of Montreal constitute a third mode of captivity, following the first two: her original enslavement and sale in Québec; and her arrest and public execution after her attempt to flee. I make the case that the use of toponymy and commemorative place naming in honor of Marie-Josèphe Angélique serves to transform her into a symbol of national redemption. In light of the mixed reactions to Harriet Tubman being put on the American twenty-dollar bill, and the recent debates on the place of statues and sites honoring slaveowners and colonial “heroes” throughout North America, the contribution I make to these discussions is a caution against a representational politics that uses figures of Black struggle to cleanse the national community of a history and present of anti-black violence.

Bio: Délice Mugabo is a Black feminist geographer whose work focuses on Black life in Québec. Her publications have examined Black feminist mobilization, anti-Black Islamophobia, and radical Black activism in 1990s Montreal. Délice’s current research interrogates how isolation shaped anti-Black violence in 18th century Quebec, and how enslaved Black women organized their struggle in this context. Her upcoming work will investigate forced conversion of Black captives in the 1800s as one of the earliest forms of anti-Black Islamophobia in Quebec.

Moderator: Dr. Emilie Cameron, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University

For more information, please contact CAP2023@carleton.ca

Note this is an in-person event. We are unable to accommodate virtual participants.