Co-creative Affordance: Rethinking “Beyond Loss” in Dementia through Co-dwelling

ABSTRACT

Based on a decade of voluntary work and a year of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in an orthodox Jewish care home in London, I demonstrate the ways in which an individual’s loss of cognition, language and memory is challenged, rethought and facilitated in everyday life. Drawing on Ingold’s idea of dwelling, I examine how loss is constantly negotiated and distributed in ways of becoming that are radically contingent, profoundly relational and potentially generative during an art activity in the context of co-dwelling. I refer to this as dementia-becoming. I suggest a more inclusive understanding of loss as a way of life, constitutive of life, and appreciated as a potential co-creative affordance.

KEYWORDS:

• United Kingdom
• artworks
• co-creative affordance
• co-dwelling
• dementia-becoming
• Jewish care home

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my special thanks to Andrew Irving, Anthony Simpson, Penny Harvey and Christopher Davis not only for their invaluable intellectual insights and comments but also for their support for publication. I also appreciate the contribution to my PhD project of people living with dementia and those who care for, work with, live with, and befriend them – who remain anonymous.

Media teaser

How are the losses in language, memory, behaviors and cognition transformed as dementia progresses, and how does such loss affect the everyday life of people living with dementia? Can certain forms and degrees of loss offer us generative opportunities to rethink how we live with, care for and perceive dementia?

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jong-Min Jeong

Jong-Min Jeong holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Manchester. The focus of his recent research has been on the dynamics of affective practices of people living with dementia, paying particular attention to affective dimensions of ordinary ethics, creative affordance, place-making, and temporality in care home settings. Contact him at: (Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, UK). Email: [email protected]