A philosophical defense of the idea that we can hold each other in personhood: intercorporeal personhood in dementia care

Abstract

Since John Locke, regnant conceptions of personhood in Western philosophy have focused on individual capabilities for complex forms of consciousness that involve cognition such as the capability to remember past events and one's own past actions, to think about and identify oneself as oneself, and/or to reason. Conceptions of personhood such as this one qualify as cognition-oriented, and they often fail to acknowledge the role of embodiment for personhood. This article offers an alternative conception of personhood from within the tradition of phenomenology of the body. The article presents a phenomenological analysis of joint musical activity in dementia care and outlines an intercorporeal conception of personhood based on this analysis. It also provides a philosophical basis for the idea that others can hold us in personhood and it questions a strict one-body-one-person logic that has pertained in much personhood debate.2

Neither property right nor heroic gift, neither sacrifice nor aporia: the benefit of the theoretical lens of sharing in donation ethics

“…This has made it useful in examination of how the self in interaction with others may repeatedly mimic others' bodily habits, gestures, postures and skills and (sometimes without being reflectively aware that, or how, this happens) come to incorporate others' patterns of behaviour into her or his own body and vice versa -via intercorporeal exchanges -as well as in the examination of how the self and the other can attune to each other's behaviour in ways that enable joint activities. Studies of child development exemplify this, as do studies of interaction in dementia care (Gallagher and Meltzoff, 1996;Zeiler 2013a). As yet another example, Gail Weiss (1999:2) shows how body images (or imaginary anatomy as she also labels it) are "construed through a series of corporeal exchanges that take place both within and outside of specific bodies" in engagement with others.…”

Making Death Matter : A Feminist Technoscience Study of Alzheimer's Sciences in the Laboratory

“…AD is often discussed within feminist studies in relation to sociocultural stigma and alienation of the subject (Behuniak 2011), personhood (Zeiler 2014), intersectional aspects of care (Calasanti and Bowen 2006;Persson and Zingmark 2006), and the importance of sociocultural and environmental factors such as the interplay of poverty, class, pollution etc. (e.g., Lock 2013).…”

“…As I briefly present in the following, many attempt within such scholarship to problematize the human centrism of AD as it is understood, represented and discussed within popular culture, political discourse, drug advertisements and society at large, particularly within a Western context. For instance, from the position of phenomenology, feminist scholar Kristin Zeiler (2014) problematizes the one-body-one-person idea of canonical personhood theories. Zeiler criticizes the cognition-oriented understanding of personhood as limited and exclusionary.…”

“…As such, as these scholars show, many of the narratives and policy making around AD and care fail because they take as their starting point claiming and restoring a subject that is a fantasy of modernism-a subject that has never existed. In these critical studies of AD, it becomes a generative mode of becoming, an "intercorporeal personhood" (Zeiler 2014) and a node of transformation. Although I hold on to such an understanding of AD as a node of transformation and a generative mode of becoming, I take my point of departure elsewhere, namely Alzheimer's sciences.…”

A phenomenological approach to the ethics of transplantation medicine: sociality and sharing when living-with and dying-with others

“…It has been used in analyses of how individuals, through habituation and repeated motor activity (mimicking) of others' bodily habits and gestures, can come to incorporate others' behavior patterns into their own body [15][16][17]. Along related lines, Gail Weiss discusses how body images are "construed through a series of corporeal exchanges that take place both within and outside of specific bodies" in engagement with others [18, p. 2].…”