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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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'Death talk', 'loss talk' and identification in the process of ageing
— forum article | | Author(s) | Karen West, Jason Glynos |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 36, no 2, February 2016 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, February 2016 |
| Pages | pp 225-239 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Ageing process ; Death ; Dying ; Attitude ; Social ethics. |
| Annotation | The authors examine the injunction issued by the prominent politician, broadcaster and older people's advocate, Baroness Joan Bakewell, to engage in 'death talk'. They see positive ethical potential in this injunction, insofar as it serves as a call to confront more directly the prospects of death and dying, thereby releasing creative energies with which to change our outlook on life and ageing more generally. However, when set against a culture that valorises choice, independence and control, the positive ethical potential of such injunctions is invariably thwarted. The authors illustrate this with reference to one of Bakewell's interventions in a debate on scientific innovation and population ageing. In examining the context of her intervention, they affirm her intuition about its positive ethical potential, but they also point to an ambivalence that accompanies the formulation of the injunction - one that ultimately blunts the force and significance of her intuition. The authors suggest that Gilleard and Higgs' idea of the third age/fourth age dialectic, combined with the psycho-analytic concepts of fantasy and mourning, allow us to express this intuition better. In particular, they argue that the expression 'loss talk' (rather than 'death talk') better captures the ethical negotiations that should ultimately underpin the transformation processes associated with ageing; and that their theoretical contextualisation of her remarks can help us see this more clearly. In this view, deteriorations in our physical and mental capacities are best understood as involving changes in how we see ourselves, i.e. in our identifications, and so what is at stake are losses of identity and the conditions under which we can engage in new processes of identification. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160205200 A |
| Classmark | BG: CW: CX: DP: TQ |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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