Aging and identity in dementia narratives

Abstract

This article explores the way that senile dementia is represented in contemporary culture, with particular reference to texts which narrate the experience of caring for a parent or spouse with one form of the illness. These narratives raise problematic issues about the materiality of the body and its relation to individual identity, and the unstable relationship between memory and identity in postmodern culture, by drawing on the actual experience of bodily dependency and disorientating memory loss in dementia patients. These speculations about the body, memory and the self are ultimately related in narratives of dementia to the inevitable process of aging and dying and the cultural meanings attached to it. The article places the representation of dementing illnesses within a Foucauldian narrative of surveillance and control in the discourse of aging and death in modern Western societies, redemptive views of illness in western culture and arguments about death in contemporary theory.     

Establishing self and meaning in low back pain narratives

Pain narratives encounter the problem of verbalising private and internalised experiences. Words appear to fall short of giving meaning to the feelings and impact of pain. In this paper we report on how people describe their low back pain and the way in which they claim to present this to clinicians. In the research interviews they need to establish themselves as believable narrators and provide accounts of how they legitimise their pain in clinical encounters. As a result, the interviews provide complex and layered narratives of pain and its representation.     

Mid-life widows' narratives of support and non-support

1. People who simply listened and did not try to give unsolicited advice or control the conversation were perceived by mid-life widows as "supportive listeners." 2. Nurses are in pivotal roles to educate and influence others about the grieving process. 3. Nurses can serve as advocates for widows in using, and teaching others to use, therapeutic communication. 4. Each widow's experience and grieving trajectory is unique.     

Choice and chance: negotiating agency in narratives of singleness

This article presents a discursive analysis of interview material in which single women reflect on their relationships and reasons for being single. Despite changing meanings of singleness, it remains a ‘deficit identity’ ( Reynolds and Taylor, 2005 ) and the problem for a woman alone is to account positively for her single state. Our analysis challenges theorisations which would suggest autonomy and agency in how identity and self are constructed. It employs the methodological approaches developed in critical discursive psychology (for instance Wetherell, 1998 ) to look at the detailed identity work of speakers as part of the identity project proposed by Giddens (1992, 2005) , Bauman (1998) and other writers associated with the ‘reflexive modernisation’ thesis ( Adkins, 2002 ). By approaching ‘choice’ as one of the cultural resources available to speakers, we present a more complex view of the dilemmas around a speaker's identity work in her accounting for her relationships and the course her life has taken     

Desiring nature: Identity and becoming in narratives of travel

Abstract

This paper explores the cultural value of desiring nature through reading the travel narratives of Val Plumwood and Alphonso Lingis with the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). As Game (1991) suggests this textual practice produces different ways of writing the social that undoes the nature/culture opposition informing popular discourses and much cultural theory. Rethinking the value of nature/culture relations has tended to be the domain of environmental philosophy. Yet a cultural analysis also has much to contribute to current debates around value and identity, embodiment and representations of desire. Such a shift requires rethinking the sensory relation between self and nature through the mediation of language. Two quite distinctive experiences of awe provide texts for this analysis. In the desire to know non‐human nature as other, Lingis and Plumwood are moved by a wish to become nearer, to move beyond the bounds of an identity premised on a cultural relation of mastery over nature. These are compelling narratives, for they do not simply indulge the reader in a romantic appreciation of nature's wildness, as if nature was simply an object of aesthetic contemplation and background to the unfolding drama of human identity. These journeys involve disturbing transformations of self; Plumwood travels into the dangerous waters of the crocodile's territory in Kakadu National Park, Australia, while Lingis encounters the uninhabitable terrain of the Antarctic. The reverberating effects of awe produce a movement of becoming ‐ becoming‐animal, becoming‐nature, which contests the Hegelian desire for mastery of nature and the teleological structure of desire itself aimed at unity. Awe as a profoundly disturbing relation, threatens to undo the dominant fantasy of human identity as pure culture, separate from the realm of nature, body and materiality.     

Snippets and silences: Ethics and reflexivity in narratives of sistering

This paper considers two aspects of feminist orthodoxy regarding ethics and reflexivity during data analysis in qualitative research. These methodological issues surfaced in an exploratory study of how discourses of sistering socially construct and produce feminine subjectivity. Research was carried out with 37 women aged between 6 and 50 from different class and ethnic backgrounds living in the UK. Auto/biographical work in sociology influenced the design of the qualitative methods and the use of a grounded theory and case study approach to the analysis of the interview narratives. The discussion of methodological dilemmas-how to analyse multiple perspectives of relationships with varying degrees of disclosure among participants-is located within both feminist standpoint and poststructuralist theory. A case is made for guaranteeing anonymity rather than confidentiality, and offering selective reciprocity rather than an equal exchange between researcher and participants. The challenge of working with feminist reflexivity is considered through the notion of bounded privacy and a silenced 'I'.     

The Banks Set in Infinite Spaces

I provide a definition of the Banks set, or set of sophisticated voting outcomes, over an infinite policy space and when individual preferences are weak. I also show that the Banks set is a subset of one definition of the uncovered set, but not another. The interpretation of the Banks set in this setting differs from Banks’s original interpretation in the implicit role of the agenda setter. In addition, a characterization of the Banks set is provided for a three-player game of distributive politics. In this special setting, the Banks set and all definitions of the uncovered set have full measure over the space of alternatives.     

Visual and textual narratives of conflict-related displacement in Northern Ireland

Combined textual and visual narratives and counternarratives illustrate a range of experiences in Northern Ireland’s conflictual, spatial landscape. In this article, I argue that combined textual and visual narratives about conflict-instigated displacement create and articulate community-specific experiences of disadvantage, with the intention of gaining political recognition and/or advantage over other communities in ongoing processes of conflict transformation. I expose the multiple, contextualised meanings of selective narratives that are accessible in language and image but, that are rarely questioned because of the political influence of their tellers or, because of their scale. Their meanings and intentions exist alongside counternarratives about intra-community displacement and displacement against other groups and are concurrent with public apathy, which serve to minimise their effectiveness as political tools to gain community-specific, social and political advantage. These narratives and counternarratives persist as key spatial markers and as sites on which conflict, and its effective transformation, are played out.     

Conflicting Holocaust narratives in Moldovan nationalist historical discourse

The effort to build a patriotic, usable past for Moldova has led important Moldovan post‐Soviet historians of the pan‐Romanian school to de‐emphasize and rationalize the Holocaust for fear of it staining a national myth grounded in Romanian victimization narratives. Much of this strategy has been focused on the Jewish connection to Soviet communism in interwar greater Romania, which supposedly undermined the Romanian state and thereby warranted a public outcry against the Jews. The construction and use of this interwar “mismemory” has been mimicked by post‐Soviet historians in recent years, whereby greater social, political and economic problems are glossed over in preference for a specifically threatening Jewish anti‐Romanianism. One’s position on this historical debate is seemingly important enough to influence one’s national credentials in the public forum.     

Role of narratives in promoting mental illnesses acceptance

This study examines the role of narrative persuasion in promoting acceptance of mental illnesses. Specifically, we investigate the relative persuasiveness of narrative versus non-narrative messages, as well as the relative effectiveness of first-person versus third-person narratives. Findings of a between-subjects experiment (N = 562) suggested that narratives were more effective than non-narratives in promoting favorable attitudes toward people with mental illnesses. Although narratives led to greater transportation among the participants, reduced counterarguing seemed to be the underlying mechanism for enhanced persuasiveness of narratives. Moreover, the results were indicative of a possible interaction between narrative perspective and participants’ gender. Implications of the findings for health campaigns are discussed.     

Whose problem? Disability narratives and available identities

Special Issue on the Arts and Community Development, Volume42, Number 4. Unfortunately, the article contained an incorrect quotationthat     

Images and narratives of autism within charity discourses

This research explores awareness of issues and debates concerning images and narratives about disability amongst autism charity brand-management professionals and their counterparts in the creative industries. These include the role of charities in service provision, the social model of disability, and disability stigma. It describes and analyses past and recent charity advertisements in both the United Kingdom and the United States, with attention to the historical context of these and the views and practices of charity and advertising professionals and autistic self-advocates, using David Hevey’s three-stage framework for disability representation by charities. The research concludes by considering emerging counter-narratives, which suggest ways charities may escape the perceived need to produce pathos or fear as part of such campaigns.     

Supervising self-supervision: constructive inquiry and embedded narratives in case consultation

The development of self-supervision has been suggested as a universal supervisory goal. However, the principle of isomorphism suggests that supervisors from different orientations will view this practice quite differently. This article elaborates an approach to self-supervision that is consistent with constructive therapies, though the intention is to provide flexible guidelines that can accommodate a range of supervisory activities. Case consultation is viewed as an "embedded narrative" involving the case story, the therapist story, and the supervision story. A process of "constructive inquiry" is used to connect these stories in order to construct the identity of a self-sustaining therapist. This process requires a conceptual shift from supervising practice to supervising self-supervision.