A great, interesting article form WG1 has recently been published and is now available in the journal Medical Humanities. The article has been written by Frederik Schou-Juul, Ieva Stončikaitė, Katharina Fürholzer, and Kate Irving under the title: ‘Reimagining the ‘Lost’ narratives of advanced dementia through literature and critical fabulation’.
This article explores how individuals living with advanced dementia – despite severely diminished communicative abilities – can still possess narrative experiences and forms of expression that too often go unnoticed or unexamined. Drawing on the concept of critical fabulation (inspired by Saidiya Hartman), the authors introduce an ethical and speculative method for imagining and sustaining the narratives that can no longer be directly articulated.
The aim is not to speak on behalf of persons with dementia, but rather to engage empathically and creatively with the silences and fragments that may still carry traces of subjectivity, experience, and identity. The article proposes that empathic and speculative storytelling through literature and other cultural forms, can offer ethically grounded ways of reconnecting with these ‘lost’ voices.
This is an important contribution for researchers, practitioners, and anyone interested in ethical dementia care, narrative studies, and the intersection of literature and health. Congratulations to the authors on the new publication! We encourage everyone to read and share the work.
The article can be found through the following link: https://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2025/05/21/medhum-2025-013249
