Remembering Forgetting

Abstract

What is entailed in literary, artistic and filmic mappings of dementia? How do writers and artists negotiate their journeys beyond the limits of an identity ‘identified’ by the ability to remember, uncovering elliptic, metamorphic varieties of existence, multiple temporalities, disjointed perceptions of space? Narrating dementia opens representation to different syntaxes and structures, transcribing absence, but also complex and often self-reflexive forms of presence and of care. In their endeavour to salvage dementia’s forgotten lives, authors confront their own memories and sense of identity and those of their community, present, past and future, exploring histories – individual and collective – that have often been repressed. What dynamics of looking, listening and relating are implied in work by creative artists and writers, but also, differently, in autobiographical writing by people with Alzheimer’s in the early stages of the disease? What new languages – verbal and visual – and understanding of language are evoked by remembering forgetting?