Alzheimer's Disease Narratives and the Myth of Human Being

dc.contributor.advisorSchultz, Jane E.
dc.contributor.authorRieske, Tegan Echo
dc.contributor.otherJohnson, Karen Ramsay
dc.contributor.otherTilley, John J.
dc.date.accessioned2012-12-11T16:49:01Z
dc.date.available2012-12-11T16:49:01Z
dc.date.issued2012-12-11
dc.degree.date2012en_US
dc.degree.disciplineEnglishen
dc.degree.grantorIndiana Universityen_US
dc.degree.levelM.A.en_US
dc.descriptionIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)en_US
dc.description.abstractThe ‘loss of self’ trope is a pervasive shorthand for the prototypical process of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the popular imagination. Turned into an effect of disease, the disappearance of the self accommodates a biomedical story of progressive deterioration and the further medicalization of AD, a process which has been storied as an organic pathology affecting the brain or, more recently, a matter of genetic calamity. This biomedical discourse of AD provides a generic framework for the disease and is reproduced in its illness narratives. The disappearance of self is a mythic element in AD narratives; it necessarily assumes the existence of a singular and coherent entity which, from the outside, can be counted as both belonging to and representing an individual person. The loss of self, as the rhetorical locus of AD narrative, limits the privatization of the experience and reinscribes cultural storylines---storylines about what it means to be a human person. The loss of self as it occurs in AD narratives functions most effectively in reasserting the presence of the human self, in contrast to an anonymous, inhuman nonself; as AD discourse details a loss of self, it necessarily follows that the thing which is lost (the self) always already existed. The private, narrative self of individual experience thus functions as proxy to a collective human identity predicated upon exceptionalism: an escape from nature and the conditions of the corporeal environment.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1805/3183
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.7912/C2/393
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.subjectDementiaen_US
dc.subjectAlzheimer's disease
dc.subjectIllness
dc.subjectNarrative
dc.subjectMetaphysics
dc.subjectBioethics
dc.subjectMedicine
dc.subjectSelf
dc.subjectStory
dc.subjectHero myth
dc.subjectCartesian ego
dc.subjectNature
dc.subjectEvolution
dc.subjectBrain
dc.subjectMind
dc.subjectBody
dc.subjectNonself
dc.subject.lcshSelf (Philosophy)en_US
dc.subject.lcshSelf in literatureen_US
dc.subject.lcshAlzheimer's diseaseen_US
dc.subject.lcshAlzheimer's disease -- Fictionen_US
dc.subject.lcshAutobiographical memory in literatureen_US
dc.subject.lcshFirst person narrativeen_US
dc.subject.lcshHeroes -- Mythologyen_US
dc.subject.lcshKnowledge, Theory ofen_US
dc.subject.lcshMetaphysicsen_US
dc.subject.lcshConsciousnessen_US
dc.subject.lcshBioethicsen_US
dc.subject.lcshNarration (Rhetoric)en_US
dc.subject.lcshThought and thinkingen_US
dc.subject.lcshDementiaen_US
dc.subject.lcshExistentialismen_US
dc.subject.lcshSelf-perceptionen_US
dc.subject.lcshPhenomenologyen_US
dc.subject.lcshNonbeingen_US
dc.subject.lcshOntologyen_US
dc.titleAlzheimer's Disease Narratives and the Myth of Human Beingen_US
dc.typeThesis
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