June Lunchtime Seminar
Date and time
Location
Sunley Conference Centre University
NN2 7HR United KingdomDescription
The Family and its Discontents: The meaning of Love in the Age of Alzheimer’s
Wednesday 11th June 2014
1-2pm
Sunley Conference Centre
the University of Northampton, Park Campus
This presentation explores the distinct contribution of literary culture to our understanding of the political and ethical implications of the biomedicalisation of dementia upon the concept of family and attendant notions such as dependency, obligation, choice and love. Through a close comparative reading of British popular novels such as Margaret Forster's Have the Men Had Enough? (1989) and Frances Hegarty's Let's Dance (1995) I want to trace the ways in which "Alzheimer's" as a historically distinct way of thinking about dementia serves to articulate concomitant transformations in the concept of family, including notions of familial obligation, personal choice and the meaning of care.
In this seminar Dr Lucy Burke, Manchester Metropolitan University focuses in particular upon the intersection of contemporary Alzheimer’s culture with the ideological discourses of neoliberal capitalism, paying particular attention to the ways in which this conjunction produces new and often fraught reflections upon the meaning of family and perceived tensions between care for the self and care for others.