ABSTRACT
Growing old differently: the phrase is intended to call something other to mind than merely the fact that images and forms of old age and aging have multiplied and diversified to an enormous extent. The suggestion put forward here is that otherness (as opposed to mere differences) should be positively reinforced. In other words, it is not just a matter of noting different forms of old age and aging but more than this, of seeking out opportunities for aging differently. In order to explore this, the article follows an older strand of theory, which has recently come to be frequently quoted in gerontology: the phenomenology of difference as reasoned analytically by Lévinas and Sartre and applied to gerontology by Améry and de Beauvoir. Here, opportunities for aging crucially depend on the way we look at it, how we observe and describe it and not least, how gerontology frames it. A distinction is made between two perspectives and their associated consequences for old age: alienation and alterity. Alienation means looking at old age above all as a disconcerting "other", as a perplexing, problematic deviation from the norm of vitality. Alterity, by contrast, refers to different options for living life in old age: options to be explored and opened up in contradistinction to cultural or academic alienation. Not least, the article appeals for diversity in scholarly approaches and for cross-disciplinary perspectives.
