226 RüdigerKunow
NormalNottoBeNormal:GerontologyandAgeStudies
Chief among the reasons for "age" being such an intense site of
negative social and cultural affect is the modern "scientific"
understanding of late life assembled in the field of gerontology.^66 As a
form of scientific inquiry and practical research that "aspires to an
integrated understanding of developmental processes over time and
changes with age thatculminate in thefinitudeoflife" (Achenbaum and
Levin398),gerontologyhasproducedmostofthemeaningsoflaterlife
whichhavebeencirculatinginthepublicsphereintheUnitedStatesand
othersocietiesallovertheworld.
"Age," as it is commonly understood now—especially as a
"condition"identifiedwithseverebodilypathologies—,wasborninthe
clinic, more exactly in the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Here, the chief
medical officer, Jean-Martin Charcot, had for some time been
conducting investigations of people—significantly women's bodies—to
determine the changes they would undergo at an advanced stage/age of
their lives. He consistently scanned these bodies for
significant/signifying marks of "a general atrophy of the individual"
(Charcot qtd. in Katz,DiscipliningOldAge119), changes in skin-color
or posture, also decayed or missing teeth. On the basis of such visual
evidence, Charcot then proceeded to develop a taxonomy, or rather, a
symptomatologyof"age."His 1867 compendiumDiseasesoftheElders
andTheirChronicIllnesses(translated into English in 1881) presented
his findings and became a foundational text for modern-day
gerontology. The Compendium helped stabilize and lent scientific
prestige for an understanding of "age" as a summarizing term for a
congeriesofmedicalmalfunctionsandpathologies.
(^66) There is of course no single, universally accepted understanding what
gerontology is or what are the proper objects of its inquiries. My narrative is
based on Achenbaum and Levin, De Medeiros, also on Linda M. Breytspraak's
survey "Introducing Gerontology: Choices for Many Audiences." The
Gerontologist55 (2015): 332-36. Print. The global dissemination of a Western
understanding of late life produced by the Western discipline of gerontology is
the result of the abiding influence of Western colonialism, as Lawrence Cohen
hasdemonstratedwithregardtothesituationinIndia(xvii,6-10,48-49).