Where will we take old age? – Thoughts in the aftermath of Covid-19

ABSTRACT

The socio-anthropological study of old age has been captured by the concept of ageism that accords values of discrimination and inequity to the attitude towards and the treatment of the elderly. This reflects cultural sentiments of modern liberal values of the desire for the equality of human rights alongside the recognition of shame and guilt as guiding principles in the construction of the social status of the old in a youth oriented milieu. The underlying narrative generating this stance is the overview of the life cycle as a continuous developmental process that stretches from cradle to grave in a cumulative manner of yielding life overview and temporal build-up of memory and identity. The fight against ageism is thus an attempt to avoid disjuncture and interruption in the integral conception of ageing, hence denying the boundaries that divide life stages from one another. This endeavor is underpinned by the assumption that cultural categories are bound to be mixed and hybridized as part of the spirit of globalization that is conditioned upon exchange, transformation and conversion. The emergence of the third age is an example for such hybridized phenomenon consisting of once separated age classes. The fourth age, however, defies the notion and possibility of blended categories as it is an undecipherable, irreversible and existential space beyond understanding, translation and temporality. Thus, the modern bound, mobility geared conceptual language of social gerontology is ill equipped to tackle the properties of the fourth age, hence confounding the two into one indivisible epistemological unit of old age. The thrust of the Covid-19 era catalyzed a critical change in the social standing of the old, separating and excluding it from the rest of society while rendering it a race apart. The globalization of the pandemic exiled the whole elderly category to an island of the disenfranchised, the condemned and the contaminated who are subject to compassionate demonization as less than humans. [ FROM AUTHOR]