Between silence and re-describing matters of care: An attempt at ethnography of cognitive disability

HRADCOVÁ, Dana and Michal SYNEK. Between silence and re-describing matters of care: An attempt at ethnography of cognitive disability. In Workshop “The Practices and Politics of Description”, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK. 2019.

Basic information

• Original name: Between silence and re-describing matters of care: An attempt at ethnography of cognitive disability
• Name in Czech: Mezi tichem a popisem záležitostí péče: Etnografie kognitivní dis/ability
• Authors: HRADCOVÁ, Dana and Michal SYNEK.
• Edition: Workshop “The Practices and Politics of Description”, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, 2019.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Keywords (in Czech): popis, hluk, kognitivní disabilita
• Keywords in English: description, noise, cognitive disability
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

Our writing is never without unintended consequences – in our descriptions we are capable of harm, and we may trespass and even hurt – our texts are not innocent (Love 2010). While engaging with people living with dementia – at home, in community services, in health care centre – we encountered multiple ways of staying with trouble (Haraway 2016) and together with our partners weaved (Star 2009) little narratives capturing the idiosyncratic dignity of multiple patterns of living with dementia. We followed the actors (Latour 2005) and tried to make sure that we speak (to them) well about the things that they value (Latour 2013). Nevertheless, in ensuing consultations, we have realized that while our stories acknowledged the complexity of caring efforts dedicated to maintaining the coherence of living and dying, the moments when actions and accounts of people identified as cognitively impaired were displaced into the realm of the untranslatable by reference to their disability were not convincingly articulated. Did the somewhat “modern” aesthetics of the caring efforts and of the “baroque” text which describes them concealed “non-rational” everyday realities? In this paper, we are responding to this question by exploring how – in care and in STS research – is the silence surrounding cognitive dis/ability created, maintained and dispelled. And while making the shift from composition towards critique, we want to diffract it as well – we ask if the silence over the ruins of disabling discourses left after the attack of critique (Latour 2004) could be dispelled by co-formulating critical matters of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017).

Abstract (in English)

Our writing is never without unintended consequences – in our descriptions we are capable of harm, and we may trespass and even hurt – our texts are not innocent (Love 2010). While engaging with people living with dementia – at home, in community services, in health care centre – we encountered multiple ways of staying with trouble (Haraway 2016) and together with our partners weaved (Star 2009) little narratives capturing the idiosyncratic dignity of multiple patterns of living with dementia. We followed the actors (Latour 2005) and tried to make sure that we speak (to them) well about the things that they value (Latour 2013). Nevertheless, in ensuing consultations, we have realized that while our stories acknowledged the complexity of caring efforts dedicated to maintaining the coherence of living and dying, the moments when actions and accounts of people identified as cognitively impaired were displaced into the realm of the untranslatable by reference to their disability were not convincingly articulated. Did the somewhat “modern” aesthetics of the caring efforts and of the “baroque” text which describes them concealed “non-rational” everyday realities? In this paper, we are responding to this question by exploring how – in care and in STS research – is the silence surrounding cognitive dis/ability created, maintained and dispelled. And while making the shift from composition towards critique, we want to diffract it as well – we ask if the silence over the ruins of disabling discourses left after the attack of critique (Latour 2004) could be dispelled by co-formulating critical matters of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017).