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Re‐imagining dementia in the fourth age: the ironic fictions of Alice Munro
Author(s) -
Goldman Marlene
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.12439
Subject(s) - the imaginary , irony , complicity , alice (programming language) , sociology , psychoanalysis , unconscious mind , aesthetics , art , art history , literature , psychology , political science , law
This paper analyses two stories by Alice Munro to explore how her fiction interrogates the prevailing social imaginary of the fourth age. Drawing on the theory of Gilleard and Higgs, I show how Munro's stories rely on irony and surreal imagery to subvert the logic that engenders and normalises the opposition between the third and fourth ages, and, by extension, the social death of people coping with later‐life dementia. Ultimately, I argue that Munro's fiction does not so much reveal the Truth about the fourth age, as expose the reader's complicity in the construction of the prevailing gothic social imaginary.