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Abstract: On Tuesday, April 5, 1994, in downtown Toronto, a 23-year-old woman named Georgina Leimonis was shot and killed in a café known as "Just Desserts." The fear surrounding the incident was bound up from the beginning with concerns about a peculiar category of person-the "Jamaican criminal"-because the suspect sought by police in connection with the killing, and later convicted and imprisoned for it, had immigrated to Canada from Jamaica during his early childhood. This article discusses the construction of the Jamaican criminal in the English language press through the lens of Michael Foucault's concept of critical ontology.
Résumé : Le mardi 5 avril 1994, au centre-ville de Toronto, une femme de 23 ans dénommée Georgina Leimonis a été tuée par coups de feu dans un café connu sous le nom de « Just Desserts ». Dès le départ, la peur entourant cet événement s'est greffée aux préoccupations visant une certaine catégorie de personne-le « criminel jamaïcain » -puisque l'individu soupçonné de ce meurtre, celui qui a été éventuellement condammé puis emprisonné, était un Jamaicain ayant immigré au Canada alors qu'il était encore enfant. Cet article analyse la construction du « criminel Jamaicain » dans la presse de langue anglaise via le concept d'ontologie critique de Michel Foucault.
Keywords: Philosophy; Communication; Critical race theory; Racism; Law enforcement; Mass media; Crime reporting; Social construction
Introduction
On Tuesday, April 5, 1994, in downtown Toronto, a 23-year-old woman named Georgina Leimonis was shot and killed in a café known as "Just Desserts." She had been talking with friends when three men, one of whom was armed with a shotgun, entered the café and demanded that customers hand over their wallets and purses. In the course of the robbery, the gun was fired, and Leimonis was severely wounded. She died in hospital a few hours later (Conroy, 1994; Hall & Stancu, 1994).
By Thursday of that week, a columnist in The Globe and Mail newspaper described the atmosphere in the aftermath of the incident: "If you live in Toronto, yesterday you talked about Georgina Leimonis. And possibly, if you live in any Canadian metropolitan area . . . you thought about the way you conduct your daily life, about the safety of familiar surroundings" (Valpy, 1994a, p. A2).