Convergences, collaborations, and co-conspirators

Abstract

The complexity of dementia has given rise to critical dementia studies, a field that seeks to ‘think dementia differently’. In this chapter, I contend that to think dementia differently, it is important to engage in radical and disruptive collaborations with critical disability studies and other critical fields, recognise convergences between dementia and other social identities and locations, and co-conspire with feminist, anti-racist, postcolonial, queercrip movements. Despite Alison Kafer’s call for political, relational affinities and flexible alliances between disability and other social justice movements, there has been little to no collusion or coalition-building between critical disability studies and critical dementia studies. I argue that integrating critical disability studies and critical dementia studies is essential and has the radical potential to create crucial coalitions that can change the social, political, and economic landscape for people with dementia and other devalued bodyminds. Building on Julie Avril Minich’s and Sami Schalk and Jina B. Kim’s work framing critical disability studies as a methodology rather than a subject area devoted exclusively to the study of disabled people, I explore the radical potentiality of placing critical disability studies and critical dementia studies in conversation. Specifically, convergences between these critical fields traverse disciplinary boundaries, uncover new critical analyses of dementia, old age, disability, and care, and expand possibilities for radical coalition-building. To illustrate, I consider how critical disability studies theories, perspectives, and frameworks may be applied in new ways to dementia. Specifically, I focus on mental disability, bodymind, debility, and crip-of-colour critique. In doing so, I elucidate how such an intersection furthers our understanding of the lived experiences of people with dementia, illuminates the structural and societal changes needed to work towards the collective liberation, and contributes to the emerging field of critical dementia studies.