The appraisal of difference: Critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm

The article deals with the re-negotiation of old age in current times of flexible capitalism and its analysis by Critical Gerontologists who criticize this process as age denial and midlife-imperialism. Starting out from the instructive critique of active ageing and consumer-based anti-ageing strategies, rooted in the heterogeneous field of Critical Gerontology, the here presented contribution aims at critically reviewing and discussing this critique. The article exposes theoretical pitfalls that make this critique run into a dead-end, since old age tends to be homogenized and sometimes even naturalized within Critical Gerontology: Though certainly often unintended, the appreciation of old age as being positively different from midlife ends up with sheltering “old people” as “the others” from the impositions of active society. After elaborating on this difference perspective and discussing its problems, I will finally sketch some conceptual ideas, inspired by poststructuralist thinking, on how to overcome the fruitless dichotomy of imperialism/sameness (“they have to be like us”) and difference (“they are the others”).