Critical Dementia Network

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… Read more »

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… Read more »

This essay discusses the use of analogies drawn from the Holocaust in cultural representations and critical scholarship on dementia. The paper starts with a discussion of references to the death camp in cultural narratives about dementia, specifically Annie Ernaux’s account of her mother’s dementia in I Remain in Darkness. It goes on to develop a… Read more »

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.14288/cl.v0i239.191363 Apocalyptic visions of an aging population rest on negative assumptions about the costs and effects of increasing numbers of people with dementia. Such discourse emphasizes a desire for cure and amplifies the costs of care while ignoring the broader cultural implications of dementia. Literary portrayals offer the opportunity to broaden the figurative landscape… Read more »

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… Read more »

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… Read more »