Linn Sandberg

Associate Professor in Gender Studies, Södertörn University•Sweden•http://www.sh.se/p3/ext/content.nsf/aget?openagent&key=sh_personal_profil_sv_741239

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Linn Sandberg in an Associate Professor in Gender Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden. Sandberg’s research interests are in the field of gender and sexuality in ageing and later life and in her work she seeks to combine queer and feminist studies with critical cultural gerontology. Sandberg has contributed to international scholarly publications, for example, chapters in Routledge Handbook of Cultural gerontology (eds. Twigg & Martin, 2015), Introducing the new sexualities studies(eds. Fischer & Seidman, 3rd Edition, 2016) Addressing the sexual rights of older people (eds. Barrett & Hinchcliff, 2018) and Ageing and Everyday Life: Materialities and Embodiments (ed. Katz, 2018) and and peer-review articles in journals such as Journal of Aging Studies; Sexualities, Men & Masculinities, International Journal of Aging and Later life. Sandberg’s research is inter-disciplinary and she works with qualitative methodologies, primarily interviewing. More recently she has moved in to the field of dementia studies and in her current research project (funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare) she investigates sexuality and intimacy among heterosexual couples with Alzheimer’s disease. Sandberg is the co-founder and convenor of the Critical dementia network, together with Richard Ward.

Dementia and the gender trouble?: Theorising dementia, gendered subjectivity and embodiment

Areas of interest

Journal of Aging Studies, 45 (2018) 25-31. Despite person-centred approaches increasingly focusing on looking at the person in dementia instead of the pathology, the role of gender in dementia has been little explored. This article discusses how pervasive discourses on a loss of self and dementia as abject are interwoven with a de-gendering of persons with dementia. The cultural anxiety that dementia evokes in terms of loss of bodily and cognitive control could also be linked to a failure to normatively and intelligibly express gender when living with dementia. As a way to sustain personhood for people with dementia and challenge discourses on people with dementia as ‘non-people’, person-centred approaches have emphasised the collaborative work of carers, relatives and persons with dementia. Often implicitly, this also involves a ‘re-gendering’ of persons with dementia where gendered biographies and pasts are upheld and gendered embodied selfhood is maintained through, for example, dress, hair and otheaspects of appearance. This re-gendering could be of great significance for people with dementia to become intelligible as persons. Still, dementia studies must further consider non-normative expressions of gender and involve feminist theorising on gender as a power asymmetry since some embodiments and selves are more likely to be sustained in dementia than others.

Queering Aging Futures

Areas of interest

Societies 2017, 7, 21; doi:10.3390/soc7030021. This paper explores the potential for cultural gerontology to extend its ideas of diversity in aging experiences by opening space to rethink conceptions of successful aging futures. We propose a ‘queering’ of aging futures that disrupts the ways that expectations of a good later life and happy aging are seen to adhere to some bodies and subjectivities over others. Drawing on feminist, queer, and crip theories, we build on existing critiques of ‘successful aging’ to interrogate the assumptions of heteronormativity, able-bodiedness and able-mindedness that shape the dividing lines between success and failure in aging, and which inform attempts to ‘repair’ damaged futures. Conclusions suggest that recognizing diversity in successful aging futures is important in shaping responses to the challenges of aging societies, and presents an opportunity for critical cultural gerontology to join with its theoretical allies in imagining more inclusive alternatives.

Regulating, fostering and preserving: the production of sexual normates through cognitive ableism and cognitive othering

Areas of interest

People with cognitive disabilities are commonly positioned as risky sexual subjects. This article discusses the discursive production of sexual normates in the form of desirable and normative able-minded sexual subjects, in scientific research on the sexuality and cognitive disabilities of younger and older individuals (in particular those with dementia). We identify three interrelated discourses: regulating sexuality; fostering sexuality; and preserving sexuality. The first of these, regulation, pathologises sexuality of people with cognitive disabilities as faulty and in need of restriction. The second discourse, fostering, is more affirmative and argues for educating for a ‘healthy’ sexuality of people with cognitive disabilities, to mitigate risks of abuse. This discourse is more salient with younger people. The third discourse, preservation, in contrast, is more visible with older people with dementia and affirms sexuality so long as it is consistent with a ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ sexuality of the past. In conclusion, scientific research reinforces the cultural ideal of the rational and autonomous individual (and as such the mature/adult) capable of making independent decisions and engaging in healthy, good sex, based on stable sexual identities. Findings demonstrate how age intersects with cognitive ableism to intensify the cultural anxiety that exists around the sexualities of people with cognitive disabilities. Linn J Sandberg, Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist & Alisa Grigorovich (2020) Regulating, fostering and preserving: the production of sexual normates through cognitive ableism and cognitive othering, Culture, Health & Sexuality, DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2020.1787519

Forgotten Wishes: End-of-Life Documents for Trans People with Dementia at the Margins of Legal Change/ Alexandre Baril, Marjorie Silverman, Marie-Claire Gauthier and Maude Lévesque

Areas of interest

Literature on the topic of trans older adults has documented a few anecdotal cases in which some trans people living with dementia forgot they transitioned and reidentified with their sex assigned at birth (“detransition”). Trans commu- nities and their allies have encouraged trans people to engage in end-of-life planning, including the preparation of legal documents that state their wishes regarding gender identity and expression in the event of “incapacity” caused by dementia. While useful, we contend that end-of-life planning is often implicitly based on cisnormative and cognonormative (normative system based on cog- nitive abilities) assumptions. Such planning is founded on a stable notion of gender identity throughout the life course (“post-transition”) and assumes that the pre-dementia self is better equipped to make decisions than the “demented” self. We conclude by encouraging, based on an intersectional, trans-affirmative, crip-positive, and age-positive approach, respect for the agency of trans people with dementia.