The Politics of Dementia : : Forgetting and Remembering the Violent Past in Literature, Film and Graphic Narratives / / ed. by Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, Nina Schmidt, Sue Vice.

• MitwirkendeR: Deng, Maohui,; Gwyer, Kirstin,; Krüger-Fürhoff, Irmela Marei,; Lucenko, Kristina,; Medina, Raquel,; Schmidt, Nina,; Thew, Emily,; Vermeulen, Pieter,; Vice, Sue,; Walrath, Dana,; Zimmermann, Martina,
• HerausgeberIn: Krüger-Fürhoff, Irmela Marei,; Schmidt, Nina,; Vice, Sue,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2021]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Media and Cultural Memory / Medien und Kulturelle Erinnerung Ser.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VI, 228 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Memory loss is not always viewed purely as a contingent neurobiological process present in an ageing population; rather, it is frequently related to larger societal issues and political debates. This edited volume examines how different media and genres - novels, auto/biographical writings, documentary as well as fictional films and graphic memoirs - represent dementia for the sake of critical explorations of memory, trauma and contested truths. In ten analytical chapters and one piece of graphic art, the contributors examine the ways in which what might seem to be the individual, ahistorical diseases of dementia are used in contemporary cultural texts to represent and respond to violent historical and political events - ranging from the Holocaust to postcolonial conditions - all of which can prove difficult to remember. Combining approaches from literary studies with insights from memory studies, trauma studies, anthropology, the critical medical humanities and media, film and comics studies, this volume explores the politics of dementia and incites new debates on cultures of remembrance, while remaining attentive to the lived reality of dementia.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Refracting History, Trauma and the Generations through the Prism of Dementia -- Dementia and Meaning Making -- In the Shadow of No Memories? The Role of Dementia in Contemporary Aftermath Writing -- Homo Sacer / Homo Demens. The Epistemology of Dementia in Contemporary Literature and Theory -- Dementia and the Politics of Memory in Fiction. From the Condition as Narrative Experiment to the Patient as Plot Device -- Dementia's Paradoxical Relation to Buried Truths -- Over/writing the Father? Dementia and the National Socialist Past in Tilman Jens's Demenz -- "That I Could Live as Not Myself": Holocaust Survival, Trans Identity and Dementia in Susan Faludi's In the Darkroom -- Dementia as Catalyst and Plot Device -- Journeying into Uncertainty: Representations of Memory Loss in Kindertransport Fiction and Drama -- Screen Memories in Literary and Graphic Dementia Narratives. Irene Dische's "The Doctor Needs a Home" and Stuart Campbell's These Memories Won't Last -- Dementia and Genocide: An Artist's Approach -- Transmuting Transgenerational Trauma: Dementia, Storytelling and Healing -- Dementia as Ethical Challenge -- Strange Bodies. Dementia and Legacies of Colonialism in Fiona McFarlane's The Night Guest -- The Temporality and Politics of Language Lost and Found. Cinema, Dementia and the Entangled Histories of Singapore -- Forgetting and Remembering in Post-dictatorial Argentina. Tiempo suspendido and the Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking Featuring People Living with Dementia -- Contributors -- Index