NotNormativelyHuman 237
(Kathleen Woodward's work on the "youthful structure of the look"
["Performing Age"162]) and patterns of marginalization, such as those
evidentinthe"Alzheimerization"oflatelife.
During the last decades, the growing prominence in the general
culture of Alzheimer's disease has worked not only to stigmatize those
affected (and their caregivers), in its orchestration of visible
invisibilities, it has become a key terrain for the critique mounted by
Age Studies against "the biomedical model of aging as a process of
diseaseanddecline"(DeatsandLenker10).DementiaoftheAlzheimer
type,soitsofficialdesignation,isonlyoneofthe(atleast)fourdifferent
types of dementia known today, but by all means the one with the
highest cultural profile. Alzheimer's (or, more popularly, "AD") is very
likely to become the most prominent age-related disease in the years to
come,anditseemstoprovetheideathatbiologyisindeeddestiny,"that
thereisnoescapefromthefactthatbodiesage,deteriorateandgiveout.
The 'Alzheimerization' of ageing is but one elaboration of this general
thesis..."(GilleardandHiggs40).Atthesametime,thisisessentially
a cultural process with its own distinct narratives ("High Gothic,"
Lawrence Cohen calls them [6]) with consequences also for their status
in the public sphere. The idea I mentioned above of groups passively
formedthroughiterativerepresentationsdescribesquitewellhowpeople
of "age" are identified increasingly often as no longer fully "there," as
"vegetables" and no longer real persons. They are both invisible (as
persons)andhighlyvisible(asproblems):
theiterativequality ofAlzheimer'sdiscoursefurtherallowsits victim to
bereconstitutedasanonperson,...thatitisnotthebiologicalprocesses
of dementia so much as the social processes of its construction that
deprives[sic]thedementedelderofselfhood.(Cohen7)In their critique of the "Alzheimerization" of late life, Age Studies
have, like mainline gerontology, negotiated the field of vital
normativities. It is one of its most important achievements to have
chronicled the long cultural history in the United States through which
"age," regarded as a stage of non-normal human life, has become "a
dread contagious" in the general culture of the country (Gullette,
Agewise25-42, 56; Woodward, "Introduction" x-xi; Cole, "Humanities
andAging"xx-xxiv).Indoingso,theyhavedevelopedaperspectiveon