Dementia and the paradigm of the camp: thinking beyond Giorgio Agamben's concept of 'bare life'

Burke, Lucy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-5118 (2019) Dementia and the paradigm of the camp: thinking beyond Giorgio Agamben's concept of 'bare life'. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 16 (2). pp. 195-205. ISSN 1176-7529

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Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11673-0...

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.

Item Type:	Article
Peer-reviewed:	Yes
Date Deposited:	26 Mar 2019 11:17
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry published by Springer.
Divisions:	Faculties > Arts and Humanities Research Centres > Creative Writing, English Literature and Linguistics
Subject terms:	Dementia, Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben, Personhood, Care, Human value, Holocaust, Social Sciences, Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Ethics, Medical Ethics, Social Issues, Social Sciences, Biomedical, Social Sciences - Other Topics, Biomedical Social Sciences, Dementia, Literature and life-writing, Personhood, Human value, Care, Holocaust, Giorgio Agamben, Bare life, Bare life, Care, Dementia, Giorgio Agamben, Holocaust, Human value, Literature and life-writing, Personhood, Applied Ethics, 1801 Law, 2201 Applied Ethics
URI:	https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/622646
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-019-09913-5
ISSN	1176-7529

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