This paper will explore the phenomenology of time for those with dementia, exploring the implications of the loss of the ability to expect, as well as to remember, and how this conditions lived experience. It is informed in this endeavour by neurophenomenological explorations of expectation and surprise undertaken by Francisco Varela and Natalie Depraz. It will think about the interaction of this disordered experience of time with the chronometric, task-oriented temporality of the care setting. Finally, it will explore the role of laughter, and its own particular temporality, in communication, care and therapy for those with dementia. It will take as its evidence memoirs by those with dementia and by caregivers, as well as qualitative studies in psychology, sociology and linguistics that investigate the lived experience of dementia.

Dr Elizabeth Barry is Reader (Associate Professor) in English at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published widely on modernist literature, medical humanities and age studies. She has edited special issues of the Journal of Beckett Studies (on language and the mind) and the Journal of Medical Humanities, and recently edited Literature and Ageing, the 2020 volume of the English Association series ‘Essays and Studies’, a collection including leading age scholars from the USA, Canada, Japan, Norway and the UK. She has held two AHRC grants to investigate literature and medicine and is international partner on an interdisciplinary age studies grant funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Her most recent monograph Embodied Time: Ageing and Illness in Modern Literature and Thought will appear with Bloomsbury in 2022.