Popularizing Dementia: Public Expressions and Representations of Forgetfulness

Description

How are individual and social ideas of late-onset dementia shaped and negotiated in film, literature, the arts, and the media? And how can popular culture's symbolic forms be adopted and transformed by those affected to express their own perspectives? This international and interdisciplinary volume summarizes central current research trends and opens new theoretical and empirical perspectives on dementia in popular culture. It includes contributions by internationally renowned scholars from the humanities, social and cultural gerontology, age(ing) studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and bioethics. Contributors include Lucy Burke, Marlene Goldman, and Annette Leibing. Cover Popularizing Dementia Contents Popularizing dementia. Public expressions and representations of forgetfulness I. LITERARY FICTION The locus of our dis-ease. Narratives of family life in the age of Alzheimer’s Deconstructing the American family. Figures of parents with dementia in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and A.M. Homes’ May We Be Forgiven Purging the world of the Whore and the horror. Gothic and apocalyptic portrayals of dementia in Canadian fiction Narrating the limits of narration. Alzheimer’s disease in contemporary literary texts The ‘terrifying question mark’. Dementia, fiction, and the possibilities of narrative II. ART, ARTISTIC APPROACHES, AND FILM Dementia on the canvas. Art and the biopolitics of creativity Cultural projection of dementia in the Reminiscence Museum. Dynamics of extrapolation Opening Minds through Art. Students’ constructions of people with dementia ‘Zip!’ Dementia materialized in clothing design Challenging representations of dementia in contemporary Western fiction film. From epistemic injustice to social participation Intercorporeal relations and ethical perception. Portrayals of Alzheimer’s disease in Away from Her and En sång för Martin III. MEDIA DISCOURSES AND PUBLIC UNDERSTANDINGS Dementia in the making. Early detection and the body/brain in Alzheimer’s disease The meanings of early diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease in Dutch newspapers. A framing analysis Respect for autonomy? The contribution of popular magazines to the public understanding of dementia care Representations of Alzheimer’s disease among non-specialists. A cross-cultural study between Paris and Boston In the company of robots. Health care and the identity of people with dementia The zero-degree of dementia. Thinking the gap between subject and substance Acknowledgements Authors