Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the humanities and arts journal that publishes scholarship on topics that investigate the critical intersections of the arts and humanities with the aging process and with age across the lifespan. University of Southern Denmark en-US Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2373-5481 From issue 6 (2022) onward, the journal uses the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license. The authors retain their copyright. For articles published in previous issues (1,2,3,4 and 5) the authors retain their copyright to their articles. Readers can download, read, and link to the articles published in issues 1-5, but they cannot republish these articles. Authors can upload them in their institutional repositories. Writing Life, Writing Time, Writing the Mother https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/143105 This article focuses on Ernaux’s later life memories of a twentieth century daughter-mother relationship, rendered in the light of this era’s historical transformations and its tensions between individual freedom and collective "fate," and between pre- and post 1968 conceptions of a fulfilled life. It refers to Ernaux’s most monumental work of self-writing, Les Années (2008) and this book’s links to what she has previously written in remembrance of her mother. The purpose is to investigate how these works seek to come to terms with, not only the loss of a mother, but also the narrator’s own aging. Ernaux exemplifies the adult daughter-senescent mother relationship in ways that are characteristic for her generation of women and suggestive of general historical changes in human relationships in Western societies since 1968. Can Ernaux’s writing provide, in the terms of Kathleen Woodward, “cultural models of older women as a way of generating alternative futures for ourselves”? Or does it fail to reconciliate the stereotypical binary of female aging as either graceful or awful, conveying tabooed aspects of old age that need to be brought to light, and even more urgently so in a socio-cultural context privileging youthfulness, individualism and uncertain human bonds? Keywords: Annie Ernaux, The Years; aging daughter-mother relationship; filiation narratives; auto-socio-biography; memory and time; autonomy and dependency; social exclusion; abjection and purification. Margery Vibe Skagen Copyright (c) 2024 Margery Vibe Skagen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-11-03 2024-11-03 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.143105 Utopian Method https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/150067 We analyze reader responses to Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book to suggest the novel offers a platform from which to imagine new, often utopian, thresholds of aging and intergenerational relationships. We suggest the way literature encourages utopian thinking is two-fold, allowing readers to reflect on the current state of the world around them and encouraging them to reimagine new possibilities. The aim of the reading groups was to use the novel to reflect on current age norms – socially, culturally, and politically – and reimagine new social futures relating to intergenerational relationships. In this paper, we discuss the findings from using The Summer Book as a platform to discuss attitudes to aging, time, intergenerational relationships, and age expectations. Participants opened up a number of avenues to reimagine age expectations, categories, and relationships, whilst also relating the fiction to their own experiences, which then often translated into discussions of how age-based stereotypes and intergenerational relationships need to be radically rethought. There were three main themes that we identified from these discussions: 1) countering age-expectations on the intergenerational island, 2) creating counter-narratives through the character of the Grandmother, 3) using the novel’s relational behaviors and practices to imagine better futures for intergenerational relationships. Jade Elizabeth French Melanie Lovatt Valerie Wright Copyright (c) 2024 Jade Elizabeth French, Melanie Lovatt, Valerie Wright https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-10-08 2024-10-08 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.150067 Special Issue https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/150834 Anita Wohlmann Aagje Swinnen Copyright (c) 2024 Anita Wohlmann; Aagje Swinnen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-11-08 2024-11-08 8 Ashton Applewhite in Conversation with Anita Wohlmann https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/144780 This interview is part of the forum “Too old for the job? The 2024 US American Presidential Elections." It was recorded on April 10, 2024, transcribed with otter.ai, and edited for clarity by Ashton Applewhite. An audio version is available <a href="https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/193">here</a>. Anita Wohlmann Ashton Applewhite Copyright (c) 2024 Anita Wohlmann; Ashton Applewhite https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-04-15 2024-04-15 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.144780 When Does Old Become Too Old? https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/144464 “For Voters, When Does Old Become Too Old?”: this question heads the February 9, 2024 subscriber-only piece by Nate Cohn in The New York Times referring to the presumptive presidential contest in the U.S. between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump. The answer? “Polling shows it’s a broad concern expressed about President Biden, not just one person’s opinion.” Cohn’s piece, which prompted 1236 comments that very day (they constitute my dataset for this reflection), is only one in an avalanche in the news and on social media in the U.S. and beyond that provides us with a window into attitudes toward aging in general and aging in relation to the American presidency in particular. Kathleen Woodward Copyright (c) 2024 Kathleen Woodward https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-04-17 2024-04-17 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.144464 What “Too Old” Really Means in the COVID Era https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/144508 Margaret Morganroth Gullette Copyright (c) 2024 Margaret Morganroth Gullette https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-04-19 2024-04-19 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.144508 Performing Presidential Age https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/145209 During a February surprise appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, President Joe Biden whipped out his trademark aviator sunglasses and traded quips with Meyers about a supposed conspiracy with Taylor Swift, much to the delight of the younger live audience. The next day, reviews were mixed about whether the president was trying too hard or did in fact manage to look hipper. To look younger. While US presidential nominees have been consciously performing their campaigns for decades, during this cycle, considering age as a performance has been especially prominent. Commentators and critics have specifically addressed the careful staging of persona that is central to presidential politics but is not always acknowledged as such. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb Copyright (c) 2024 Anita Wohlmann; Valerie Barnes Lipscomb https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-05-23 2024-05-23 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.145209 It’s Not Just About Age Anymore: https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/146460 The U.S. presidential elections have been the site of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and ageism among other problematic issues. While the 2024 U.S. presidential election continues to be fraught with numerous “isms” and accusations, the focus in this essay is on a new and powerful discrediting tactic: the whisper of cognitive decline. Accusations of cognitive decline not only cast doubt on a politician’s ability to think and act clearly—an unpardonable sin in leadership—but also builds on ageist stereotypes that make such accusations seem credible despite evidence. Ultimately, I argue that because Donald Trump and Joe Biden are wealthy, white, educated men of roughly similar ages, seventy-seven and eighty-one respectively, targeting their cognitive status feeds into social stigmas and fears that are difficult to counter and that, unfortunately, the harm caused by this new level of attack negatively affects older people and people living with neurocognitive disorders. Kate de Medeiros Copyright (c) 2024 Kate de Medeiros https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-06-04 2024-06-04 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.146460 "Watch Me" https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/146457 At age eighty-one, Joe Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. Donald Trump, his predecessor, held the same status during his term in office. When the next chief executive is inaugurated on January 20, 2025, Biden will be eightytwo years old and Trump seventy-eight. Whoever wins will be the oldest president in history. No wonder that age figures prominently in the presidential election campaign of 2024. Jørn Brøndal Copyright (c) 2024 Jørn Brøndal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-06-06 2024-06-06 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.146457 Geriatric Politics and the American Presidential Election https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/146878 When Anita Wohlmann and Aagje Swinnen invited me to write a commentary on age and ageism in the upcoming 2024 American presidential election, I was entranced by the idea. As a Canadian, I have watched with fascination the dramas of American elections from the front row of our international border, beginning with the 1960 debates between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon, the first on TV. Both were experienced politicians. Kennedy was a senator and Nixon had been Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower for eight years, thus expected to be debate winner and next President. But TV was not kind to him. Kennedy appeared fit, handsome, charismatic, camera friendly, and most importantly, much younger than Nixon, who was awkward, uncomfortable, hesitant, and sweaty (also recovering from a knee injury). Both were in their forties, Nixon only five years older than Kennedy (see Kraus, 1977). Stephen Katz W. Andrew Achenbaum Copyright (c) 2024 Stephen Katz, W. Andrew Achenbaum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-06-21 2024-06-21 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.146878 Beyond the Impasse https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/147326 Cynthia Port Copyright (c) 2024 Cynthia Port https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-07-04 2024-07-04 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.147326 Polarizing Uses of Older Age https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/147380 The Forum in Issue 8 of Age, Culture, Humanities is dedicated to the timely topic of the 2024 US American presidential elections, where the role of older age has loomed over the campaign. We invited distinguished colleagues from the USA, Canada, and Denmark to contribute short comments and reflections from an age studies perspective. Eight of them accepted, despite the short deadline, and their essays were published in instalments from mid-April to mid-July 2024.  In this introduction, I expand on one topic that popped up again and again, namely the polarizing tendencies many observed in the current discourse. I ask:  What is the role of age in the context of polarization? Anita Wohlmann Copyright (c) 2024 Anita Wohlmann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-07-07 2024-07-07 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.147380 Aging Experiments https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/147427 Scott Herring Copyright (c) 2024 Scott Herring https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-08-07 2024-08-07 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.147427 Critical Humanities and Ageing https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/149002 Caitlin Doley Copyright (c) 2024 Caitlin Doley https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-09-05 2024-09-05 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.149002 Mediterranean Timescapes https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/145285 Nina Van der Sype Copyright (c) 2024 Nina Van der Sype https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-07-07 2024-07-07 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.145285 Ageing in the Modern Arabic Novel, by Samira Aghacy https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/145935 Anna Stanton Copyright (c) 2024 João Guimarães https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-06-24 2024-06-24 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.145935 Fictions of Dementia https://tidsskrift.dk/ageculturehumanities/article/view/144147 Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury Copyright (c) 2024 Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2024-07-04 2024-07-04 8 10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v8i.144147