Futures of Forgetting: Alzheimer's Disease and the Lively Politics Of
Futures of Forgetting: Alzheimer’s Disease and the Lively Politics of Anticipation by Jennifer Mei Lum A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Michael Wintroub, Co-chair Professor Lawrence Cohen, Co-chair Professor Marianne Constable Professor Susan Schweik Spring 2018 !1 Abstract Futures of Forgetting: Alzheimer’s Disease and the Lively Politics of Anticipation by Jennifer Mei Lum Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professors Michael Wintroub and Lawrence Cohen, Co-chairs This dissertation explores how Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been imagined at the turn of the 21st century in American culture. It asks, more specifically, how AD has become an object of forward-looking thinking, feeling, acting, and organizing within narratives told by different kinds of people, including scientists, pharmaceutical drug marketers, policymakers, writers of popular fiction, and disease activists. I take as a point of departure the concept of a ‘health politics of anguish’, which scholars in the social sciences and humanities have deployed in critiquing the social construction of Alzheimer’s disease as an experience of devastation and loss. These arguments have pointed out the mobilization of such affect by myriad stakeholders in the disease, including scientific researchers seeking to build careers, pharmaceutical companies and the (anti)aging industry at large seeking financial profit, and grassroots coalitions of private citizens channeling their own grief over Alzheimer’s to convince researchers and policymakers of the imperative of developing a drug-based cure.
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