Make your life an act of creative resistance
Aging is a physical reality, but age is a cultural and social construct
Roberta Maierhofer, Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, expert on Age/ing Studies and author
Engraved on the porch of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Ancient Greek aphorism “Know Thyself” never stops challenging people of any generation. But when it comes to the question of how to actually do that, every person is left alone to figure out the best way to approach the task. If we factor aging into the equation of “knowing,” things get even more complicated. How can we know who we are when the reflections we perceive contradict what we feel inside? Professor Roberta Maierhofer gives us a hand with the concept of “anocriticism.”
Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, Roberta Maierhofer is an expert on Age/ing Studies. She is the co-editor of the book series Aging Studies, a member of the Aging and Ageism Caucus of the National Women’s Studies Association and a founding member of the European Network in Aging Studies, as well as a facilitator of the founding of the North American Network in Aging Studies. As chair of ENAS InheritAGE, a working group in the European Network in Aging Studies, she promotes an interdisciplinary approach to gerontology. More recently, she has initiated the Gender Net EU project on “Aging Masculinities,” to analyze social constructions of aging masculinities and their cultural representation in contemporary European literatures and cinemas.
Her neologism anocriticism has noble origins, based as it is on the Latin word “anus” meaning “old woman,” which Germaine Greer, the Australian writer, feminist, and social critic employed in “anophobia,” to describe the fear of old women. The other half of the story comes from “gynocriticism,” a term coined in the Seventies by the American literary critic and feminist Elaine Showalter to address a literary project aimed at constructing a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature. Stemming from these two concepts, Professor Maierhofer uses anocriticism as an analytical lens that validates our lives as a creative story of resistance to normative assumptions. Basically, it is a way to answer the question of who we are by looking at the way we “are aged by culture,” to use Margaret Morgenroth Gullette’s expression, while being aware of our own stories and possibilities.
How would you define anocriticism?
As a pioneer in the European context of the study of the cultural intersections of age and gender, I coined the term anocriticism to indicate an interpretational approach that focuses on the individual experience of age and aging – not stereotypical assumptions. A key point of the concept is that, similar to the distinction made between ‘sex’ and ‘gender,’ a distinction should be also made between ‘chronological age’ and cultural ideas and social norms associated with old age.
What does anocriticism add to the debate about aging?
It connects gender and age as a theoretical concept, and therefore emphasizes that age cannot be essentialized, that it needs to be seen – like gender – as both material reality and cultural representation. One of the easiest ways to understand this concept is to refer to the feminist statement “biology is not destiny.” Biology is a material reality of our lives, but more importantly, what we associate with that biology – the cultural representations and people’s interpretations thereof – then construct both gender as well as age in our societies.
Only when understanding age through gender, can we understand the cultural restrictions that are constructed. At the same time, an understanding of these restrictions offers us the possibilities of recognizing mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. It is a feminist act of resistance of not accepting the status quo, and – borrowing Judith Fetterly’s term of the 1970s – makes us ‘resisting readers’ of our culture. Resisting the conventional reading of cultural assumptions concerning age and gender makes change possible.
On the basis of your studies, what are the building blocks of “age” in Western culture?
Although aging is also a physical reality (our bodies do age), age is a cultural and social construct, too. Remarkably, our understandings of age and gender, as two key social categories, are intrinsically intertwined. This has already been pointed out by cultural critic Susan Sontag in 1972, in her essay “The Double Standard of Aging.” As I have noted in my reading Salty Old Women of this essay, Sontag argues that many of old age’s negative associations such as helplessness and passivity are also associated with women. This means that women are affected by aging more than men in terms of multiplied stereotypes. In addition, age and gender have in common that both operate as binaries in our culture. One is either young or old and being old, in fact, is defined by contrast to being young. It is also important to note that our understanding of what it means to be old is also situated historically and changes over time.
Does this binary view contribute to explaining why we do not question the declining narrative about aging?
Yes and no. As we live our lives within these limits and the social and cultural restrictions, we can also live our lives in resistance. Literature and art are important representations of voices of acceptance and resistance, of consent and opposition, of subversion of the status quo, and shows us the ambivalences (an important term!) of our lives. They enable and empower us to question the narrative of decline. Even in the stating of decline, we can also read resistance in that narrative, understanding it as expression of the diversity of the human experience
We grow up exposed to a youth-infused culture that we absorb throughout our lives. Is there a way to escape the adoption of the declining narrative?
There is not only the declining narrative, even if this might be dominant. There are also counter-narratives. If we look at the margins, we find narratives that offer different perspectives, but sometimes they have been read as absurd, pitiful, ridiculous. As I have argued in my work, we have to be “resisting readers,” in the context of aging. We have to detect these narratives that resist the dominant discourse, that offer escape in terms of not idolizing age, but acknowledging the ambivalences of our lives, the messy grey-areas in which we live our lives.
Analyzing literature and other cultural representations addressing age can help us to understand and accept the in-between of ambiguity that makes up our lives and also the stories we tell about it. As I have emphasized in my work, literary texts have the potential to portray ‘counter worlds’ (“Gegenwelten”) and remind us of the fact that our world can be changed, also when it comes to dominant cultural narratives. Literary texts and their analysis are important as they can open up our imagination and encourage more diverse understandings of aging – beyond the decline narrative.
Do you notice any changes in the way aging is viewed, perceived and approached in the West? For instance, is there more awareness of different life stages in being old?
Age has become a topic of interest and research. When I started out at the beginning of the 1990s, everyone thought it was absurd what I was doing. They thought I had a problem with age. They questioned the validity of my research, and thought it very strange. Now, everyone is into aging studies, and it is a similar development as with gender studies, but there are many who still don’t understand the concept of ambiguity and ambivalence.
We need to connect the question of age to real social, political, and economic measures, as they are not always, but sometimes connected. Age poverty is real, loneliness in age is real and a health issue. We have to understand that aging is not just an individual, personal issue, but needs to be connected to the political in terms of understanding social structures and limitations that are connected to aging.
You pointed out that “successful aging” is a marketing approach to target the healthy “young old.” Is it possible that a label that invites us to extend youth prevents us from acknowledging and embracing the positives that later life stages bring along?
Again, ambivalence and the in-between are important here. Marketing always addresses our desires and wants to create longings that ads promise to fulfill. We all know, they don’t, but the narrative of promise is often good enough to buy that soap, that yogurt, or take a trip to a specific destination. It is all about the story. It is important to be able to read these stories as a ‘resisting reader’ (see above), not to evaluate it or demand a politically correct language. Let us read such texts as human longings and desires.
Successful aging in language positions our lives as a binary of either success or failure, and therefore this notion has to be questioned. Our lives are more complex. But we could also re-define success differently. Margaret Cruikshank talks about “comfortable aging,” which doesn’t appeal to me so much, as it has a ring of complacency. Why do we need to use such adjectives? Do we talk about successful youth? Similar to gender, our understanding of age is shaped by culture and society. Old age is neither inherently good nor bad. Youth is neither inherently good nor bad. Positive stereotypes of old age are as essentialist as negative ones. Old age does not have any inherent qualities. Life is always ambivalent.
The extended life expectancy adds more decades to our time. Do you notice the emergence of role models/icons for the later parts of our life?
I believe the question needs to be framed around the issue of inclusion and exclusion, and diversity. Models/icons for the later part, but also other parts of life, are those that offer diversity and inclusion, and I believe we see more of this. Living longer is one of the greatest achievements in the Western World, and we need to celebrate this.
More people are living longer and living longer healthier. We need to change the narrative, and celebrate this, and understand what we have achieved. A more affirmative approach would guarantee a better life for all, young and old, women and men – with all the ambivalences and ambiguities it entails.
