“The Art of Losing our Minds“: The Sunday Observer of the 19th August 2015.
I have written before on Hole Ousia about how we use language. Whether we are scientists or artists, or indeed both, we should consider carefully how we use language.
Metaphors of loss abound in this particularly newspaper article. I am referring to language that we can all too easily use to describe the lives and experiences of others. There is no sense in this article that agency and humanity are generally retained, or not completely lost, even in severe dementia.
The title of this blog-post comes from the newspaper article. Like metaphors of loss, I am also not fond of the much-used “signpost” metaphor. But perhaps this “signpost” is correct: maybe it is the world, alongside the individual with dementia, that has also lost its way?