Transing dementia: Rethinking compulsory biographical continuity through the theorization of cisism and cisnormativity

Abstract

Using theoretical tools from trans studies and disability/crip studies, we reconceptualize the self in the context of dementia. We illustrate that most dementia discourse, scholarship and intervention emphasize a maintenance of the pre-dementia self. We argue that the compulsory biographical continuity needed to maintain the pre-dementia self is based on interlocking forms of ageism, ableism, and cogniticism, and interacts with what we call cisism (the oppressive system that discriminates against people on the basis of change) and its normative components, cisnormativity* and ciscognonormativity. After providing a critical genealogy of the term cisnormativity*, we resignify and redeploy this concept in the context of dementia, demonstrating how it is useful for critiquing compulsory biographical continuity. Following the verbs queering and cripping, we propose a transing of dementia that leads to a new conceptualization of the self that is fluid and changing, rather than one anchored in multiple oppressions.