Who will tell the stories of the deceased women? Resisting oblivion through feminist narrative assemblages

Gender research sometimes focuses on deceased women who suffered extreme bodily violence simply because they were women. Feminist studies often centre their narratives on the many victims of the horror of the cis-hetero-patriarchal-colonialist system, i.e., those who have been systematically ignored and made invisible. Through their networks, these authors issue powerful denunciations, giving these women a voice, honouring them, and advancing creative "more-than-human" proposals that critically confront normalised "necropolitics" (Mbembe, 2011). Most of the developed practices can be understood as "techno-craft ecologies", in which bodies, times and spaces overlap. They often consist of experimental post-productions that explore, select, and bring together diverse materials in order to "co-create new objects". Among the most significant of these everyday narrative practices is collages, i.e., a specific form of assemblages. Focusing on the specific objectives of reparation-oriented practices, the assemblages of artefacts somehow re-signify the spirits of the dead: the latter were for a long time censored and subjected to the rationale of conscious domination. They are now co-opted spectres, absorbed by the systemic logic of death. Reparation practices enable accomplishing their emancipation as political subjects. This article is midway between a state of the art and a manifesto. It addresses the urgent question: Who will tell the stories of the deceased women? We highlight the research accomplished in gender-oriented investigations into memory-building and reparation, delving into the past, forestalling oblivion and revisiting bygone stories. The issue calls for "making-with" (Haraway, 2019) in the present, to foster a possible, ethical, and more human and liveable near future.