Alan Blum is Executive Director of the Culture of Cities Centre and Senior Professor of Sociology and Communication and Culture at York University, Canada. He is the author of The Grey Zone of Health and Illness, Theorizing, and The Imaginative Structure of the City, and co-author of On the Beginning of Social Inquiry and Self-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences.

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• Prologue: The Dying Body as Lived ExperienceIntroduction: Death, Mystery, Life1. Desperation as Grey Zone2. Fear and Trembling3. The Collective Fantasizes Death: The Imaginary at the End of its Tether4. Fear and Likely Stories5. Death, Happiness and the Meaning of Life: The View from Sociology6. Ending and BeginningPart 2: Dementia and the Look of Madness: Aging, Raging and the Poetics of Passing On7. The Enigma of the Brain and its Place as Cause, Character, and Pretext in the Imaginary of Dementia8. The Writing Machine: Public Health, Dementia and the Spell of the Brain as an Object of Social Enthusiasm9. Plague Strikes the Family10. The Cliche of Depression11. Tragedy and Comedy12. The Travesty of End of Life

Alan Blum is Executive Director of the Culture of Cities Centre and Senior Professor of Sociology and Communication and Culture at York University, Canada. He is the author of The Grey Zone of Health and Illness, Theorizing, and The Imaginative Structure of the City, and co-author of On the Beginning of Social Inquiry and Self-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences.

Select Guide Rating

• Prologue: The Dying Body as Lived ExperienceIntroduction: Death, Mystery, Life1. Desperation as Grey Zone2. Fear and Trembling3. The Collective Fantasizes Death: The Imaginary at the End of its Tether4. Fear and Likely Stories5. Death, Happiness and the Meaning of Life: The View from Sociology6. Ending and BeginningPart 2: Dementia and the Look of Madness: Aging, Raging and the Poetics of Passing On7. The Enigma of the Brain and its Place as Cause, Character, and Pretext in the Imaginary of Dementia8. The Writing Machine: Public Health, Dementia and the Spell of the Brain as an Object of Social Enthusiasm9. Plague Strikes the Family10. The Cliche of Depression11. Tragedy and Comedy12. The Travesty of End of Life