‘Whose story is it and what is it for?': Life story as critical discourse in dementia studies

This chapter is based on a transcribed online conversation about our experiences of life story work that took place in January 2022 between the authorship: Jackie, Aagje and John. The conversation was set-up and facilitated by the book editors. We were invited to take part in the conversation because of our positioning as academics/academic-practitioners who had been involved in life story work and dementia care for a number of years, but had approached the topic from different cultural values and disciplinary perspectives. During 2022 we subsequently analysed a transcript of our conversation and three separate, but inter-linked, themes emerged from this process, namely, (1) entangled life stories; (2) the value and ethics of life story work and (3) future life story work. It also became apparent that, retrospectively, the guiding question of our conversation was ‘Whose story is it and what is it for?' It is this retrospective, but overarching life story question, underpinned by extracts from our conversation assembled under each of the theme headings, which are explored in this chapter. A number of bullet-pointed insights are presented at the chapter’s conclusion to indicate some of the pre-existing tensions, as well as some of the potential future directions, of life story work.