Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer's Disease Life-Writing

This is the first book-length exploration of the thoughts and experiences expressed by dementia patients in published narratives over the last thirty years. It contrasts third-person caregiver and first-person patient accounts in different languages and across a range of media, from diaries and memoirs to autobiographies and picture books. It focuses on the poetical and political questions these narratives raise: what images do narrators appropriate; what narrative plot do they adapt; and how do they draw on established strategies of life-writing. It also analyses how these accounts engage with the culturally dominant Alzheimer's narrative that centres on dependence and vulnerability, and addresses how they relate to discourses regarding gender and ageing. Linking literary scholarship to the medico-scientific understanding of dementia as a neurodegenerative condition, this book states that patients' articulations must be made central to dementia discourse. It further argues that committed alleviation of caregiver burden through social support systems and altered healthcare policies requires significantly altered views about ageing, dementia, and Alzheimer's patients.§§ This book is open access under a CC BY license. §§