ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with genres of life writing and the ways in which these relate to questions of identity in dementia. It investigates what caregivers’ memoirs contribute to an understanding of relational identity in dementia, and how genre and gender may modulate the understanding of relational identity. The chapter describes the subgenre of filial dementia memoirs in the wider political and literary context of a fast-growing number of dementia caregivers’ memoirs. The hybrid nature of relational life writing makes it difficult to decide to whom a life or life story belongs. Caregivers’ memoirs are frequently hedged by such disclaimers. Authors subscribe to an ethics of ‘truth-telling’ while they simultaneously acknowledge the impossibility of realising such an agenda. Drawing attention to the aesthetic, mimetic, and political aspects of representation should not lead to the erroneous conclusion that these are neatly segregated dimensions.
