Gilleard, C; (2022) Ageism and the Unrealizability of Old Age. University of Toronto Quarterly , 90 (2) pp. 96-110. 10.3138/utq.90.2.03.

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Abstract

This article addresses the topic of ageism through the lens provided by Simone de Beauvoir concerning the subjective “unrealizability” of age. In her book, Old Age, she adopted the terminology of existentialism to argue that old age was one of the “unrealizables”: phenomena that can be grasped only through their “otherness.” Old age, in her view, can only ever be understood as an object position, or rather a multiplicity of object positions, none of which aligns with the experiencing self. This inherent otherness of age provides a ready template for viewing agedness as an undesired, undesirable, and fundamentally alien characteristic. The outwardly ageing subject’s view of him- or herself remains always ageless, distinct from such otherness, experienced as more real than any self-reflected aged other. But while age’s unrealizability may sustain the individual’s subject position as ageless, it risks perpetuating the devaluation of the aged as always a collective other. Rather than demanding a resolution of such object and subject positions, I suggest that a more realizable goal may be to accept this inevitable opposition and focus instead upon improving the objective conditions of later life. Enriching the actual relations of care might constitute such an objectively “realizable” goal, one that is also in keeping with the social intent of de Beauvoir’s book.

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