254 RüdigerKunow
The civic identity of late life must then be seen as the result of
ongoing deliberative processes in the public sphere where the "social
[and I would add also cultural]spaceis generated by communicative
action" (Habermas, Facts and Norms 360; emphasis original).
Concerning this essentially collective, open-ended process, the point of
cultural critique is in my view not so much whether it produces
representations of "age" which are accurate or even fair (this would be
the job of the social sciences) but whether or not they allow "the lived
experience of age as expressed in the words, speech, stories, and
writings of older people" (Cole and Sierpina 252) to be heard in their
own voice. The critical interest of American Cultural Studies in recent
years, namely to read texts in the interest of agency, can here attain
politicalimplicationsmoredirectly.
Where"Age"Is:CulturalTopographiesofLateLife
"Age"isthatperiodofthelifecoursewhichislikenootherhaunted
bytemporality. Questions concerning when "old age" begins, when one
is no longer young or already old have always been matters of serious
concern, if not trepidation, in individual and collective thought on later
life. In such thinking, the temporality of human life is a slippery-slope
leading inexorably from womb to tomb. Such an apocalyptic scenario
performs important social and cultural work, for example in many
popular ideas about the sneaky setting-in of senescence behind a
person'sbackandpossiblemeasurestocountersuchprocesses.
And because the body has, since Charcot's time, functioned as age's
favored symptomatic domain of the non-normative, that body, whole or
inparts,hasbecomeamobilesignifiertobescannedforsignssignifying
the coming of "age." Lynne Segal reflects on this process from the
perspectiveofgender:
As feminists we had consciously disdained the dictates of the youthful
beauty culture.... Yet we remained largely unprepared for the dismay,
fears, anxiety, even for many the sudden horror [sic], which an ageing
woman can experience on looking into the mirror and seeing a face she
cannotaccept,yetuncannilyfamiliar.(12)