256 RüdigerKunow
formerly cherished objects and ideas, states: "It is not I who am saying
goodbye to all those things I once enjoyed, it is they who are leaving
me"(qtd.inSegal7)—therebyindicatingthat"they,"thegoodthingsin
life,arefromnowonpositionedinanotherdomain,farawayfromhers.
Suchconfigurationsoflatelifeinspatialterms,andtherearemany,may
havebeenmoreorlessoccasionalormetaphorical.
In what follows, on the other hand, I will attempt to limn out a
spatial understanding of "age" in order to answer the question opening
this chapter, "where age is"—which once again involves questions of
normsandtheirviolations.Aninitialstepinthatdirectionistorehearse
one more time the hoary dichotomy which pits "age" against "youth."
This dichotomy separates the life course into (at least) two different
stages which are socially and culturally organized around a disjunction
between two separate spheres: the "land" (to use Virginia Woolf's
metaphor) of the young and then the domain of the old. Woolf's choice
of the sea for this domain is suggestive and deeply rooted in cultural
traditions;^86 aside from sustaining the notion of departure, perhaps on a
journeyofnoreturn,thereisalsoasenseoffindingoneselfoninsecure
ground.Insuchschemes,midlifewouldfigureasatransitzonefrom,or
acontactzonebetween,onesphereandanother.AsIhopetoshowina
moment,whenitcomesto"age"thereisindeedanot-always-so-neatbut
nonetheless insistent separation of generational spheres—a spatial
apartheid^87 Iwanttocallit—atworkinU.S.cultureatleast.
At this point, however, I am more interested in the theoretical
constructofspatialapartheidanditsideologicalimplications.Forthese,
one might go all the way back to Emerson and his assertion that "Age,
like women, requires fit surroundings" (n. pag.), an age-friendly
environmentwhichheinsistedrequiredthepropsofstatus-definedsites
and positions. The spatial apartheid involving later life today becomes
apparent if we translate this notion into the conventional C. P. Snowian
two-cultures-model: the ignorance Snow was complaining about of the
(^86) This is the case even in traditions which Woolf usually viewed with disdain.
Tennyson's poem "Sunset and Evening Star" (1889) likewise makes use of the
seaasaspaceofdisjunction.
(^87) As far as I can see, the term "spatial apartheid" goes back to the 1990s and
Mike Davis's critique of privatization and the emergence of gated communities
inSouthernCalifornia.Cf.hisCityofQuartz(1990).