On the Limits of Staying Afloat

 Flying Carp Books (2019)

nigelbaines.com

 

To be fair, Nigel Baines defines himself as a cartoonist and illustrator, rather than a writer, and his graphic memoir, Afloat, which documents his experience of caring for someone with dementia, interspersed with reflections on his childhood, gerontology, and the death of a beloved parent (in this case, the woman he refers to throughout as mum), is more successful as a pictorial project, than as a written work.   

 

Indeed, one wonders why he didn't simply produce a wordless book in the style of Frans Masereel or Lynd Ward: I think that might have worked better. 

 

For I sometimes found the narrator's voice intrusive and slightly flippant in tone. I also think that the silence of the text would have nicely echoed the silence that the demented subject often slips into. Further, as Baines himself notes, often the most important thing in graphic novels - as in life - happens in the spaces between panels and the silences between words; that's where stories unfold.  

 

Having said that, perhaps it's necessary to provide some autobiographical background and maybe the personal element is something that's all too often missing in my own musings on this topic.

 

However, you have to exercise caution with such material. Otherwise, as is the case here, you end up telling us too much about yourself and not enough about the ravishing violence of dementia. In his attempt to stay afloat, Baines misses the opportunity - at the risk of drowning - to really plumb the depths of pain, loss, and the other profoundly monstrous aspects of life lived in extremis.    

Notes

 

Thanks to Catherine Brown for kindly gifting me this book. 

 

For a follow up post to this one on coping contra enduring, click here. 

In Praise of Euthanasia as a Practice of Joy before Death

Thanatos: god of death tattoo, by L4ndX

deviantart.com 

There are, apparently, over 850,000 people in the UK diagnosed with some form of dementia, including my mother. An ill-fated consequence of an ever-ageing population, this terminal condition is now the leading cause of death in elderly women.

According to the pressure group Care Not Killing, everything that can be done to extend the life of the individual should be done and whilst promoting more and better palliative care on the one hand, they campaign with conviction against euthanasia and/or assisted suicide, hoping to influence both public opinion on this issue and the opinion of the law makers.

To be fair, they do have arguments as well as moral concerns and some of these are perfectly valid and legitimate. But, ultimately, these arguments fail to persuade and I don't share their position. Nor indeed do I accept their narrow definition of euthanasia as the intentional killing a person whose life is felt not to be worth living.     

This definition not only robs the term of its gay and affirmative element which is clearly present in the original Greek, εὐθανασία, meaning a good or happy death, but it deliberately - and I think cynically - echoes the phrase Lebensunwerte Leben by which the Nazis designated sections of the population whom they judged fit for destruction.   

One of the regrettable things about National Socialism is that it continues to cast a dark and ominous shadow over several ideas - including euthanasia - that would otherwise be open for rational debate and calm philosophical reflection. 

If the Nazis hadn't spoken so callously of useless eaters and hadn't tied their thinking in this area to a genocidal machine, then perhaps those of us who, like the great English empiricist Francis Bacon, regard euthanasia not merely as a pragmatic measure in the face of pain and suffering, but also an ethical practice of joy before death, would be able to speak freely and not have to sit in silence as assorted humanists, healthcare providers, and faith-based busybodies lecture us about the sanctity of life. 

Dementia: From Bad to Verse

People who leave the obscure and try to define 

whatever it is that goes on in their heads, are pigs.

 
Living Words is a therapeutic arts organisation, created in 2007 by the writer Susanna Howard, which works with people - like my mother - who are dealing with dementia and the accompanying loss of speech skills and other neuro-cognitive functions.

The belief is that even the most delirious babbling should be regarded as valid expression and that by recording and faithfully transcribing what is said, you might produce a form of poetry in which the truth of madness, as well as the inner world of the person, is revealed. This, says Howard, is her great mission.

Of course, as she admits, the process involves editing. But, Howard insists, there is nothing added and no meddling; the meaning of the text is present in the utterance of the speaker and simply allowed to shine forth on the page with transparent authenticity.

I am, of course, extremely skeptical about all this - to say the least.

It's not that I think it impossible to establish a dialogue with those who can but stammer imperfect words and noises without fixed syntax, or the recognised logic of language. And I certainly don't wish to abandon anyone to silent oblivion, if they still desperately desire to communicate (although, having said that, I must admit to finding something beautiful in the total silence of the object).

Rather, my main concern is that there's a real danger in the Living Words project of subscribing to the romantic myth of madness; particularly in relation to the (equally romantic) myths of art and creative genius. Howard is profoundly mistaken in believing that every single word or sound that falls from a madman's lips is worthy of respect and only needs to be sculpted by an artist-in-residence in order to produce poetry and truth.

For as Foucault was at pains to point out in the conclusion to his history of insanity in the Age of Reason, whilst the madness of Nietzsche, or Van Gogh, or Artaud belongs to their work, their work does not belong to madness. That is to say, madness is precisely the absence of art and its annihilation; "the point where it becomes impossible and where it must fall silent ..."

Foucault continues:

"Madness is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition ... it draws the exterior edge, the line of dissolution, the contour against the void. ... Madness is no longer the space of indecision through which it was possible to glimpse the original truth of the work of art, but the decision beyond which this truth ceases irrevocably ..."

And - let's be honest here - the Living Words team are not dealing with figures such as Nietzsche, Van Gogh, and Artaud; the poets they encounter in the various hospitals and care homes have very little of any philosophical interest or artistic merit to contribute, be they sane, senile, or somewhere in between.

Of course, not that this really matters: Toute l'écriture est de la cochonnerie.


Notes

Michel Foucault; Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard, (Tavistock Publications, 1987). Lines quoted are on p. 287. 

Those interested in knowing more about the Living Words project should click here to visit their website.

Many thanks to Simon Solomon for suggesting this topic. 

Alzheimer's and the Becoming-Object of Loved Ones

Recently, Dr Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, claimed that, in his view, cancer is the best way to die, as it affords one the opportunity to come to terms with death, say goodbye to family and friends, and spend time doing favourite things or visiting favourite places. Thanks to a combination of 'love, morphine, and whisky' even the pain that cancer results in can be managed and made bearable.   

This perfectly reasonable argument predictably attracted much criticism; a spokesperson for Cancer Research, for example, claimed that his comments were insensitive, irresponsible, and nihilistic! The fact that he also suggested we should spend the billions of pounds invested worldwide each year in a search for a cure to cancer in other areas, obviously didn't help convince the above of the merits of his case.  

What most interested me about Dr Smith's remarks, however, was his view that it is the protracted death from dementia that it is the most awful to contemplate or experience, as the person is slowly robbed of their humanity and, eventually, their life. 

This proves, contrary to what some of his critics claim, he's no nihilist; rather, he's a romantic humanist who finds the prospect of becoming-inhuman or becoming-object the most terrible thing imaginable. As an object-oriented philosopher - and as a son whose mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - I would beg to differ here and challenge Dr Smith's thinking.

Contrary to what he says - and despite our anthropocentric conceit that posits human subjectivity as a unique and superior form of existence - there's nothing to fear about becoming-object, or making a return to material actuality. It might in fact be rather joyous and liberating to be stripped of agency and autonomy; to abandon the illusion of essential inner life and discover instead the seductive and ironic qualities of complete inertia and indifference.

Why dream of being your old self once again when you can become-object? Indeed, might it not be the case that in becoming-object one finally becomes what one is ...?