Alterity and Intersectionality: Reflections on Old Age in the Time of COVID-19
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5752/P.1678-3425.2023v8n15p19-35Keywords:
age, alterity, Beauvoir, COVID-19, Feminist Theory, insersectionality, old ageAbstract
This paper begins from the author’s own discovery, during the COVID epidemic, that she has become one of the “old.” The paper explores the ways in which the old are subject to distinctive forms of alterity and social exclusion, and to what Simone de Beauvoir (in La Viellesse; Old Age) calls a “conspiracy of silence,” in contemporary Western society. This exploration is then extended to document how the general conspiracy of silence has also long pervaded feminism and continues to pervade feminist theory. It is especially striking – and troubling – that considerations of old age are ubiquitously absent from current intersectional analyses of other major forms of oppression such as gender, race, and class. If feminist theory is effectively to fulfill its mission as a body of critical theory that bears on current oppressions and informs resistant political practices, then it urgently needs to extend its remit to examine old age. For old age is both an oppressive social location in itself and a site where multiple other oppressions intersect. Additionally, ignoring old age hampers theoretical work itself concerning such vital issues as vulnerability, power, justice, freedom, and possible groundings for political solidarity.
Downloads
References
ADMINISTRATION FOR COMMUNITY LIVING (ACL). 2018 profile of African Americans age 65 and over. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2019.
ÁSTA. Categories we live by: The construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
BAARS, Jan. Aging and the art of living. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2012.
BAZELON, Emily. People are dying: Whom do we save first with the vaccine? New York Times Magazine, December 24. 2020.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. A Velhice. v. I. A realidade incômoda. Tradução de Heloysa de Lima Dantas. São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livro, 1970b. Disponível também em: https://doceru.com/doc/nscvnxc5
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. A Velhice. v. II. As relações com o mundo. Tradução de. Heloysa de Lima Dantas. São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livro, 1970b.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. La Vieillesse. Paris: Gallimard, 1970a.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. O Segundo Sexo. v. I. Fatos e Mitos. Tradução de Sergio Milliet. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1980.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. O Segundo Sexo. v. II. A Experiência vivida. Tradução de Sergio Milliet. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1980.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. Old Age. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. London: André Deutsch Ltd. And George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. The Coming of Age. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1972.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. The second sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Knopf. 1949/2010.
BEAUVOIR, Simone de. A walk through the land of old age. Trans. Alexander Hertich. Introduction by Oliver Davis. In Political writings, ed. Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmermann. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
CALASANTI, Toni; SLEVIN, Kathleen F., ed. 2006. Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking. New York: Routledge, 2006
CALASANTI, Toni, SLEVIN, Kathleen F.; KING, Neal. Ageism and feminism: From “et cetera” to center. NWSA Journal 18 (1): 13–30, 2006.
CALVERT, Jonathan; ARBUTHNOTT, George. Failures of state: The inside story of Britain’s battle with Coronavirus. London: Mudlark, 2021.
CHO, Sumi; CRENSHAW, Kimberlé Williams; MCCALL, Leslie. Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38 (4): 785–810, 2013.
COLLINS, Patricia Hill; BILGE, Sirma. Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2016.
DEUTSCHER, Penelope. Afterlives: Beauvoir’s Old Age and the intersections of The Second Sex. In: A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Laura Hengehold and Nancy Bauer. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.
DEUTSCHER, Penelope. Beauvoir’s Old Age. In The Cambridge companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
DEUTSCHER, Penelope. The philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, conversion, resistance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
EHRENREICH, Barbara. Natural causes. New York: Twelve, 2018
FEINSTEIN, Max M. et al. Considerations for ventilator triage during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet, April 28. 2020.
FORD, Tiffany; REBER, Sarah; REEVES, Richard V. Race gaps in COVID-19 deaths are even bigger than they appear. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, June 16, 2020.
GILLEARD, Chris; HIGGS, Paul. Ageing, corporeality and embodiment. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2013.
GRZANKA, Patrick A., ed. Intersectionality: A foundations and frontiers reader. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2014.
GULLETTE, Margaret M. Declining to decline: Cultural combat and the politics of the midlife. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997.
GULLETTE, Margaret M. Agewise: Fighting the new ageism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
HELFAND, Benjamin K. I. et al. The exclusion of older persons from vaccine and treatment trials for coronavirus disease 2019—Missing the target. JAMA Internal Medicine 180 (11): 1546–49, 2020.
JOHNSON, Colleen L.; BARER, Barbara M. Family lives of aging Black Americans. In Ways of aging, ed. Jaber F. Gubrum and James A. Holstein. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003.
KING, Neal. The lengthening list of oppressions: Age relations and the feminist study of inequality. In Age matters: Realigning feminist thinking, ed. Toni Calasanti and Kathleen F. Slavin. New York: Routledge, 2006.
KRUKS, Sonia. Simone de Beauvoir and the politics of ambiguity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
LAWS, Glenda. Understanding ageism: Lessons from feminism and postmodernism. The Gerontologist 35 (1): 112–18, 1995.
LENNON, Kathleen; WILDE, Anthony. Alienation and affectivity: Beauvoir, Sartre and Levinas on the aging body. Sartre Studies 25 (1): 35–51, 2019.
LORDE, Audre. Age, race, class, and sex. In Sister outsider. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press, 1980/1984.
LUGONES, María. Playfulness, “world”-travelling, and loving perception. In Making face, making soul: Haciendo caras, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa. San Francisco: aunt lute books, 1990.
MACDONALD, Barbara. Outside the sisterhood: Ageism in women’s studies. In Women and aging, ed. Jo Alexander et al. Corvallis, Ore.: Calyx Books, 1986.
MARSHALL, Leni. Age becomes us: Bodies and gender in time. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015.
MILLER, Sarah Clark. The lived experience of doubling: Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenology of old age. In The existential phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Wendy O’Brien and Lester Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001.
MOSS, Zoe. It hurts to be alive and obsolete: The ageing woman. In Sisterhood is powerful: An anthology of writings from the women’s liberation movement, ed. Robin Morgan. New York: Random House, 1970.
OVERALL, Christine. Aging, death, and human longevity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
OVERALL, Christine. Old age and ageism, impairment and ableism: Exploring the conceptual and material connections. NWSA Journal 18 (1): 126–37, 2006.
PEARSALL, Marilyn. The other within us: Feminist explorations of women and aging. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997.
SEGAL, Lynne. Out of time: The pleasures and the perils of aging. London and New York: Verso, 2013.
SPELLS, Alta. Care rationing could be the next step for overwhelmed hospitals in Utah. CNN.com, October 26, 2020.
STOLLER, Silvia, ed. Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy of age: Gender, ethics, and time. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2014.
THANE, Pat, ed. A history of old age. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
TWIGG, Julia. The body, gender, and age: Feminist insights in social gerontology. Journal of Aging Studies 18 (1): 59–73, 2004.
VAN DYK, Silke. The othering of old age: Insights from postcolonial studies. Journal of Aging Studies 39 (December): 109–20, 2016.
WALKER, Margaret Urban, ed. Mothertime: Women, aging, and ethics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
WENDELL, Susan. Old women out of control: Some thoughts on aging, ethics, and psychosomatic medicine. In Mother time: Women, aging, and ethics, ed. Margaret Urban Walker. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
WESTWOOD, Sue. Introduction. In Ageing, diversity and equality: Social justice perspectives, ed. Sue Westwood. London and New York: Routledge, 2019.
WOODWARD, Kathleen. Introduction. In Figuring age: Women, bodies, generations, ed. Kathleen Woodward. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
ZELNER, Jon et al. Racial disparities in COVID-19 mortality are driven by unequal infection risks. Clinical Infectious Diseases 72 (5): e88–e95, 2021.
ZIMMERMAN, Harm-Peer. Alienation and alterity: Age in the existentialist discourse on others. Journal of Aging Studies 39 (June): 83–95, 2016.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Editora PUC Minas
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
