Abstract
It seems rather obvious that the experience of aging is not indifferent to gender, and that studies of gender ought to account for aging and old age. Yet, the two subject matters have been rarely investigated together. The anthropological-phenomenological approach introduced in this chapter responds to the plea to include the absent body into the debate of gendered aging. It is my contention that this absence can only be filled if we do not merely focus on the material or physical side of the body. Embodied (gendered) aging is neither simply a discursive or cultural phenomenon of meaning, nor is it just a material, physical or biological fact. Instead, I want to apply an entanglement of phenomenological and anthropological concepts to the debate in order to investigate the aging body as experienced or lived from within, and show how this very experience is shaped and framed from without by environmental, historico-cultural, and social circumstances. It is together – from within and without – that the aging subject’s specific situation of living is shaped.
We are obliged to live this old age that we are incapable of realizing. And in the first place we have to live it, to experience it, in [and upon] our bodies.
(Beauvoir 1996, 301)
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, such a theoretical philosophical reflection can only offer a first methodological orientation or theoretical scheme that then must be accompanied, i.e., realized, filled in, complemented, and evaluated, by concrete empirical research on the experiences of specific groups of agers.
- 2.
It is not clear what it means to say that age is “socially constructed.” Judith Butler herself criticizes the notion of “social construction” as deeply misleading in that it implies a non-constructed biological stratum on which a social construction then takes place (Butler 1993, x–xi). Instead of such a dualism, Foucault and Butler would presumably argue that legal, intelligible bodies and subjects only materialize within and through processes of signification, as per Butler, or are themselves materially shaped and even produced by power structures expressed in architecture, institutions, and social practices (and not only linguistic significations), as per Foucault.
- 3.
Inspired by a (misinterpretation of) Butler’s theory of performativity of gender, they assume that not only gender, but also age is merely something we simply choose to perform, and therefore do not ultimately have to do so. However, performativity does not mean that we can voluntarily chose to be a wo/man or other, or even to become old. Dominant social norms are enacted upon us (from without) and determine us, while at the same time it is we who have to enact these very norms in the respective practices in everyday life. Within this variable individual or collective fields of performance, the transformation of norms and power becomes possible (Butler 2015, 63). Despite good intentions, such accounts risk reinforcing normative standards and imperatives of health and beauty and stigmatize those who do not age successfully or are not (economically, socially, or physically) able to participate in the “beautification” of oneself and lifestyle choices of Western consumer societies.
- 4.
I do not pretend to be the first to introduce phenomenological approaches to this debate; research on embodiment and aging (Tulle 2008; Schweiger 2012; Faircloth 2003) draws on investigations from the sociology of the body which refer to the phenomenological tradition, especially Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (Leder 1990; Crossley 2001; Turner 1996). Also see Dekkers, Chap. 5, and Schües, Chap. 7 in this volume.
- 5.
Certainly, one cannot ascribe those states and experiences to all persons who identify as women (e.g., to those who are unable to procreate or menstruate, etc.) and some can be ascribed to those who do not identify as women. Therefore, it is key in certain contexts to specify for which group of women these activities and experiences would in fact apply. It is also these differences among women and men that demonstrate the deficiency of generalizing and essentializing sex upon gender, and vice versa.
- 6.
Beauvoir’s perspective is strongly influenced by Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body as situated and anchored in the world and, at the same time, directed towards this world (McWeeny 2017).
- 7.
Beauvoir focused in her study on the situation of retired workers in early capitalistic society. She described the economic and social situation that defines the “I cannot” of the (male) elderly; including their marginalization, invisibility, poverty, and exclusion from public life. Her goal was to make these groups of people visible with the express plea for a more inclusive and equal society that allows individuals to face their own respective destinies. This involves respecting old age as an inevitable and important stage of life, to give the elderly in turn economic and social possibilities to continue pursuit of personal projects, and to remain physically and intellectually active for as long as possible. In a way, this comes close to the recent research and policy agenda of active aging.
- 8.
Merleau-Ponty illustrates this in his famous interpretation of the phantom limb, whereby a patient continues to act as if he would still possess his respective limb despite the fact the arm was amputated. Within the habitual layer of the body, the lost limb, along with its related capacities, is still there; it remains a part of the patient’s body-schema. Here, the respective habitual layer is not being updated through the current actions and the changed practical field of the actual body (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 84).
- 9.
Therefore, old age is unrealizable: One cannot experience what “we are for others in the for-itself mode” (Beauvoir 1996, 291).
- 10.
This othering of our material body can even be more immediate, such as, when parts of our living bodies turn more into merely material objects, like falling hair, cracking teeth, thick yellow nails, hanging eyelids (cf. Heinämaa 2014, 176). Here, they signal a transformation into materiality, and thus foreshadow the necessary end of living. In this sense, it is understandable that one would rather address this situation as a kind of mask, and not an inherent changing of oneself.
- 11.
In liberal capitalistic societies, no external discipline or sanction is needed anymore, everyone wants to optimize her- or himself, to fit in and be economically and socially accepted. We thereby follow the rationale of this liberal managing power and its logic of progress, productiveness, and success, while thinking it is our own free choice. But that means at the same time that when we fail, we are the only ones being made responsible (Oksala 2016; Foucault 1991b). In this sense, it is we who are responsible if we do not age successfully or productively. In this rationale, one cannot think finiteness, because finiteness is the end of progress.
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Wehrle, M. (2020). Becoming Old. The Gendered Body and the Experience of Aging. In: Schweda, M., Coors, M., Bozzaro, C. (eds) Aging and Human Nature. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25097-3_6
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