Entangled Sensory and Affective Cripistemologies of Dementia

The article aims to explore the entanglements of sensory and affective dimensions of the subjective experience of dementia as represented in Emma Healey’s novel Elizabeth is Missing (2014) and thereby foregrounds a cripistemological understanding of the dementia subject. While this novel has generated sufficient critical readings that span issues from narrative technique and generic experiments, to the nature and representation of memory, this article focuses on the tangled sensory and affective aspects of the protagonist Maud’s dementia-affected subjectivity. It first considers the paradoxical relationships among narrative, epistemic stability, and lived experiences of dementia and then argues that the representation of sensory and affective modes of knowing and responding to the world in the novel forces readers to reconsider the normative discourses around dementia, compelling us to rethink what is socio-culturally and biomedically known about the illness. The article concludes by identifying two levels of cripistemology embedded in the novel: the textual and the extra-textual.