no / This paper considers the situation of people with dementia who are
living in long-term care from two rarely-applied theoretical perspectives.
The first, Agamben’s theory of biopolitical life versus bare
life, demonstrates that the situation of people with dementia living
in care homes or hospitals approximates to that of prisoners,
internees and refugees, deprived of full citizenship or biopolitical life. In
popular imagery people with dementia are frequently referred to, first in
terms of numbers, as a ‘rising tide’, in a way that has historically been used
to justify discrimination and social exclusion. In many, care environments
it is, moreover, still the case that people with dementia are reduced to a
condition of ‘bare life’ only: given little choice, having few rights, lacking
freedom of movement, and subjected to almost constant surveillance. In
other contexts, such treatment is known to cause or exacerbate many of
the problems which – following a biomedical model – are constructed as
‘symptoms of dementia’, such as disorientation in time and space, sleep
disturbance, hallucinations and repetitive movement. The second body
of theory is Bakhtin’s work on cultural resistance. This demonstrates that many of the so-called ‘challenging behaviours’ manifested by people with
dementia, can better be understood as coping, sense-making and self-determining
strategies adopted in order to survive within prevailing organisational
cultures. Based on a series of studies carried out in intermediate
and long-term care since 2009, the paper draws on a range of narrative
and film-based examples to demonstrate the ‘courage, humour, fortitude
and cunning’ with which, as Walter Benjamin noted, the oppressed have
always met the conditions of their oppression. In the process, ‘challenging
behaviour’ is given political and ideological meaning, as protest, perpetrated
by people who are struggling against extreme odds to be reinstated as
full citizens. / Conference website: http://www.aginggraz2017.com/conference-schedule
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/12121 |
| Date | 28 April 2017 |
| Creators | Capstick, Andrea |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Abstract, Accepted Manuscript |
| Relation | http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/19a082_bfaaf7e92005423db7d44983ec927051.pdf |
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