Pols, J.

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International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travellingPols, J.Publication date2018Document VersionFinal published versionLicenseCC BY-NC-SALink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Pols, J. (Author). (2018). The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling. Webpublication or website, Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2018/09/the-fool-with-the-watering-can-or-a-synchronous-time-traveling.htmlGeneral rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:10 Mar 2023The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/the-fool-with-the-watering-can-or-a-synchronous-time-traveling.html[30-10-2018 11:27:21]A collaborative websitecovering the intersections ofmedical anthropology,science and technologystudies, cultural psychiatry,psychology and bioethics.HomeAboutMastheadResourcesTagsSelect Tag~Stories about time shifted, folded and shared, the extraordinary ordinary, and keeping separate and being a-part. September 17, 2018The fool with the watering can, orasynchronous time travellingBy Jeannette PolsOne of the most bewildering and fascinating things about spending time withpeople with dementia is that they can rapidly travel through time. This wasmost clear with Mrs B., a daydreaming woman of 86. Her skin was deeplywrinkled and in the nursing home she kept pretty much to herself. One day, Ihad a long, stretched out conversation with her, with many long pauses. Wewere basically ‘lounging’ through an afternoon, sitting at her favourite spotnear the window. She switched from telling me that she was getting married, tohaving to look after her two kids, to being a child again. Most of the women inthe nursing home where I did my fieldwork wanted to be called by theirmaiden name, even though the staff would call them by their married name, towhich they would also respond.This time travel is generally interpreted as disorientation. But it is more to thepoint to call it being alternatively or diversely oriented, since once within aparticular time-space frame, everything makes sense from that particular frame.When Mrs B. had to take care of the kids, this was how it was, and she was notto be stopped. Responses such as “But your kids are old, it is 2017, the onlyhome you have is the one you are in now” made no sense, and disqualified MrsB., the speaker. In the nursing home, the residents would always claim that theothers were the crazy ones; visitors seemed to miss the – for the speaker – veryobvious point of who was who, where they were and what they were doing. Tothe residents, the world made perfect sense, even if it wasn’t always to theirliking. And often enough, visitors or fellow residents who contradicted theirworld were labelled as liars.Thinking with DementiaEdited by Krause, Kristine;Pols, Jeannette;Driessen, Anneliekeand Yates-Doerr, EmilyContributorsSusanne van den BuuseFrancesco ColonaAnnelieke DriessenAlessandro DurantiSilke HoppeKristine KrauseNatashe Lemos DekkerIngunn MoserElinor OchsJeannette PolsAnnekatrin SkeideLaura VermeulenHenrik VighMaarten van WestenEmily Yates-DoerrOverviewIntroductionTimeDaily lifeParticipationLicense: Log inScience,Medicine, andAnthropologyFollow us: 1 CommentAging, Alzheimer, anthropology,being together, Care/caregiving,Dementia, eth ography, Europe,fieldwork, Materiality, Memory,Mental health, nursing home,relating, repertoires, sharing,temporalities, the netherlands,time, time horizons, time travel   The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/the-fool-with-the-watering-can-or-a-synchronous-time-traveling.html[30-10-2018 11:27:21]The sensation of time travelling also occurred on a micro level, when thingsand people were forgotten from one moment to the next. Once Mrs F. wantedto do something about the dry plants she discovered in the living room of thenursing home. “Great!” I thought “Initiative should be rewarded!” The spirit ofthe day was staying active and doing what you can for yourself and doingmeaningful things for others, so as not to simply doze by the window like MrsB. With great enthusiasm, I went on the hunt for a watering can. This was notso easy, as there were few objects in the Spartan room. Fall prevention! Withsome effort I found a watering can in a locked closet that a nurse had to openfor me. When I ran back to proudly present my find to Mrs F., she said to mewith a good sense of theatre:“Oh dear, are you going to water me?” Yes, well, where to start explaining? Itried to accept being the fool with the watering can with some grace.So how to speak with these time travellers? It is often not so clear wherepeople are in time and space. It takes quite some effort to find out who is alive,at what age, and so on. No less is at stake than the very facts of the situation. Iobserved three possibilities for relating different realities, or different time-space coherences.The first is to try to get people into ‘our’ commonsense time and space: “It isJune 19, and I am preparing for the workshop next week, and I know more orless who will be there”. This is a useless strategy for people who lack short-term memory, and who live in some more or less distant past. They cannotadapt to the new time, unless they are still in an early stage of dementia.“Sorry, but what you are saying does not make sense. And could you please getout of my way, as I am wanted at home.” (This is the polite version.) Apartfrom these pragmatic hazards, fighting about facts does not seem to be themost interesting and useful thing to do.The more romantic second way is to try to follow the person with dementia toher timeframe. This is difficult, because you are often unsure of where peopleare; and, if you do know, you probably do not know the issues that wereimportant to them then. Present time reality might kick in harshly when, say,the home is found, with other people living in it. Still, it is a possible strategyto engage in a conversation; to play along and join the quest to go home.The third option is to try to find a common world, to invent a reality that can bevalid and meaningful for both. I suggest that this would mean centring on thehere-and-now. This is not as easy as it sounds, because this here-and-now has aparticular horizon as well. The starting point is maybe not a conversation, but asensation. There is a lot of communication in the nursing home throughholding hands or supporting arms. Physical contact is a way to create a sharedworld through something that is felt. Touching creates a presence. If I feel theother, she must be there.Conversations can also be about things felt in the here-and-now. For instance,speaking about the children or the partner of Mrs B. can take the shape ofmaking them present, of speaking about who they are and why they are solikeable or difficult. It is, so to speak, a more general conversation that does notneed a specific anchoring in time: the daughter is always fond of herring, and itdoesn’t matter if the mother thinks of her as 20 or 40 years old. General talkslike this evoke and perform a shared understanding in the here-and-now. The‘now’ created is both the time-space you are physically in, as well as any othertime-space that can be made to fit the objects and people around.The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/the-fool-with-the-watering-can-or-a-synchronous-time-traveling.html[30-10-2018 11:27:21]For a person without dementia, tinkering with the timeframe is maybe moredifficult. It is a lot easier to speak with a person with dementia in a nice way ifyou did not know the person from before. Since if you did know thempreviously, you would constantly be searching for the person you once knew,and the comparison would always be negative for the person you meet in thehere-and-now. The horizon you look for has to bracket the past as far as it(negatively) interferes with the conversation you are trying to have. The personwith dementia has to be allowed to exist with just enough future and justenough past to suggest interesting topics to speak or muse about. Home iswhere the heart is, and an apple a day keeps the doctor away.In the nursing home, I learnt that these very localised conversations that aresimultaneously so decontextualised in style can be about a myriad of topics:about the weather, about food, about nice dresses, about good things to do.They are localised in the here-and-now, but the speech is also about generalthings that are not necessarily tied up with the here and now. A philosophicalrepertoire, you could say: it shows a certain wisdom about the world.But even if the content takes the form of wisdom, a chat is usually more aboutcommunication, about sharing things and being together. Relating for the sakeof relating, not for exchanging content.Jeannette Pols is appointed as Socrates professor ‘Social Theory, Humanismand Materialities’ at the Department of Anthropology, program ‘Health, Careand the Body’, at the University of Amsterdam. She is Associate Professor andPrincipal investigator at the section of Medical Ethics of the Academic MedicalCentre in Amsterdam. In 2017 Pols was appointed as a member of theAdvisory Board for the Government on health care: RVS (Raad voorVolksgezondheid & Samenleving). The core of Pols’ research is empiricalethics, which studies ‘normativity in practice’. She formulated three researchlines for the Socrates chair, to which she was appointed in 2012: 1) the analysisof ethical and aesthetic values in sociomaterial care practices; 2) thearticulation of actual and preferable subject positions of people with chronicdisease and other technology users; and 3) conceptualizing practical knowledgeof patients and their carergivers.[view academic citations]One Response to The fool with the watering can, or asynchronoustime travellingPingback: Thinking with spirits | SomatosphereOther stories from Time:Six photos of my fatherRe-enacting memoriesTiming euthanasiaFolding timeRefraction of time

The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling

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The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling

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