Lost Memories: Subjectivity and Temporality in Narratives of Cognitive Decline

Amnesiac Mild Cognitive Impairment, or aMCI, is an underdiagnosed, debilitating memory-loss condition and frequent precursor to dementia that remains largely unfamiliar to the public, though early detection can slow progression. Yet, even as the field of aMCI studies grows, the condition has rarely, if ever, been specifically addressed in literary works or examined in literary studies. Building upon scholarship by Lugea and the Queen’s University Dementia Fiction Project—which analysed the “mind styles” of cognitive impairment fiction—this talk extends their findings with a “mind style” analysis of amnesiac fiction. I then move towards a practice-oriented account of my own fiction writing, as I develop an emergent lexicon depicting the mindset of an aMCI-afflicted character in my novel-in-progress. This talk reflexively narrates my methods of creating a fictional voice for the subjective terrain of cognitive impairment, demonstrating how such a voice can challenge representational modes and literary conventions of memory loss.