Multi-species dementia studies: how moving beyond human exceptionalism can advance dementia's more critical turn

This chapter explores how multi-species perspectives can advance the critical turn in contemporary dementia studies. Drawing on work from across the social and biomedical sciences, this chapter calls on researchers to question, disrupt and de-stablise the logic of human exceptionalism that has underpinned dementia studies for the past two centuries. In so doing, the chapter highlights three key areas where thinking with the more-than-human in mind can help facilitate ‘radical alterity’ in dementia. These key areas are: connecting cognitive ableism with the ideology of speciesism; understanding embodied experiences of dementia across species; and, moving beyond (human) rights based approaches. The chapter concludes with some final thoughts on the development of multi-species approaches within dementia’s more critical turn.