Anne Carson, dementia and the negative self

Abstract

To what extent can one’s attitude towards life help mitigate the impact of dementia? In ‘Uncle Falling’, one of the chapbooks that integrate the Float (2016) collection, Canadian poet Anne Carson argues that working against the tendency to exert total control over one’s life can provide some protection against the shock of the disease. If the time comes, one should be prepared to let go, or, as the poet points out: ‘If you have to fall . . . Do your best to fall . . . In no time at all’ (‘Uncle’ 37). Th ere is, according to Carson, more continuity than one tends to assume between life before and aft er dementia, especially in what concerns one’s control over language and identity, so it might be possible to fi nd traces of post-traumatic subjectivity in our familiar, supposedly normal, lives, perhaps by paying attention to those aspects of the everyday that undermine our control.