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Chapter 19 - Overcoming Decline (in) Narrative

Episodicity in Stories of Dementia and Ageing

from Part III - Applications: Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2024

By
Martina Zimmermann
Edited by
Anna M. Elsner  and
Monika Pietrzak-Franger
Anna M. Elsner
Affiliation:
Universität St Gallen, Switzerland
Monika Pietrzak-Franger
Affiliation:
Universität Wien, Austria
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Summary

This chapter explores how the culturally and medically prized concept of narrative influences pessimism about ageing. Taking dementia as a situation where anxieties about ageing and continuity of self are particularly acute, it illustrates the pressure emanating from narrativity for life as lived and life as narrated, revealing episodicity as a viable response to this two-fold pressure. Reading life histories of older people, it additionally shows that episodicity is hugely relevant also for how life is pitched retrospectively. Overall, this chapter argues that a stronger focus on episodic self-experience throughout life has the potential to challenge aspects of the decline narrative that nourishes pessimism about ageing.

Keywords

ageingcoherencecontinuitydementiaepisodicityidentitynarrativityoral historyretrospection
Type
Chapter
Information
Literature and Medicine , pp. 330 - 344
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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