Vulnerabling People: Dementia and the Making of Embodied Agency

In dementia research and care practice and there has been a turn to try to offer approaches that acknowledge the patient’s personhood and agency and protect the rights of the vulnerable. Yet while defining people as demented or vulnerable, the focus is on the disabilities of and dysfunctions in the patient, and the strengths are left undiscussed, thus ignoring an important part of being a person. I move the focus from disabilities to strengths and call for more attention to be paid to other ways of interaction with vulnerable people. As an example, I consider ‘making’ as a form of creative interaction and how this applies to people living with dementia. My focus is on the phenomenological experience of the world. I argue that this offers a perspective that shows the value in embodied knowledge and making practices in a manner that acknowledges the agency and ability to interact with the world, even when other forms of interaction might not seem possible. Keywords: agency, art, dementia, making, phenomenology, vulnerabilit