NotNormativelyHuman 211
In the following analysis, I seek to address but also contest the
conventional and hence predictable Cultural Studies wisdom that
everything is "constructed." Clearly, cultural constructivism has a point
here: concerning both "age" and disability the natural order on closer
inspection turns out to be not so natural after all but fabricated and
formed according to the imperatives of social, economic, and cultural
utility.ButIwillalsoacknowledgethatthematerialconditionsinwhich
the elderly or the disabled live are not exhausted by pointing to the
created, composed, framed character of the label that defines identifies
and positions them in the social and cultural manifold. Nor can these
materialconditionsbewilledawaybysupplantingoneconstructionwith
another, perhaps more adequate or acceptable one. In many of the
examples discussed below, especially in the context of disability, it is
the stubborn materiality of the body, its developments, and
contingencieswhichactasaforceofmaterialresistancetoindividualor
collectiveself-fashioning.
2."Age"asCulturalNormandForm
"Age"—regardlessofitsspecificmeaningandusage—isanumbrella
term covering an almost limitless range of significations, a term,
moreover, that joins together description and prescription. "Age" is a
designator and at the same always also a judgment. It invokes a set of
normative assumptions about the human life course, its stages,
characteristic features, expectations, and entitlements. The term is a
name,anorm,abiologicalandculturalonethatisdeeplyentrenchedin
cultural practices and traditions, projecting a sweeping but frequently
unspecified normality onto the uneven development of human life-in-
time. This is the reason why terms like "old age," "aging," and "the
functional losses (impairments) and more broadly to an "inability to perform a
personal or socially necessary task" together with socio-cultural reactions
(Berger6).