Dementia and the Paradigm of the Camp: Thinking Beyond Giorgio Agamben’s Concept of “Bare Life”

Abstract

This essay discusses the use of analogies drawn from the Holocaust in cultural representations and critical scholarship on dementia. The paper starts with a discussion of references to the death camp in cultural narratives about dementia, specifically Annie Ernaux’s account of her mother’s dementia in I Remain in Darkness . It goes on to develop a critique of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitics and “bare life,” focusing specifically on the linguistic foundations of his thinking. This underpins a consideration of the limitations of his philosophy and ontologically derived notions of weakness and passivity in imagining life with dementia as a potential site of agency or as the locus for transformative ideas about care, community, and non-instrumentalist conceptions of human value.

Death in Advance? A critique of the “Zombification” of people with dementia

“…Furthermore, in the debate on how to cope with rising healthcare costs in ageing societies and the accompanying proposals for age-based rationing of healthcare resources, it has been suggested that older people with cognitive impairments are regularly no longer regarded as persons but only as a socio-economic burden. This dehumanizing perspective excludes them from the moral and legal community and degrades them to "bare life" stripped of any normative significance, which puts the protection of their dignity and right to life at risk (Burke, 2019;Kaufman, 2006;Leibing, 2006).…”