Critical Future Studies and Age: attending to future imaginings of age and ageing

Jayne Raisborough,Watkins Susan

doi:10.3384/cu.3156

Abstract

This paper draws on cultural gerontology and literary scholarship to call for greater academic consideration of age and ageing in our imaginations of the future. Our work adds to the development of Critical Future Studies (CFS) previously published in this journal, by arguing that prevailing ageism is fuelled by specific constructions of older populations as a future demographic threat and of ageing as a future undesirable state requiring management and control. This paper has two parts: the first considers the importance of the future to contemporary ageist stereotypes. The second seeks potential counter representations in speculative fiction. We argue that an age-aware CFS can allow us not only to imagine newfutures but also to reflect critically on the shape and consequences of contemporary modes of relations of power.

Highlights

This paper calls for greater academic consideration of age and ageing in imagining the future
This paper set out to argue that a critical account of ageing was required for critical future studies” (CFS)
We argue that ageing makes for a timely and fertile study as part of CFS not least because ageing presently manifests across media and policy as a pressing future crisis (Carney 2018)

Summary

Introduction

This paper calls for greater academic consideration of age and ageing in imagining the future. Margaret Morganroth Gullette (2011: 5), for example, approaches decline as “an entire system that worsens the experiences of ageing-past-youth” She encourages us to regard ageing as a narrative, recognizing that cultural stereotypes of older people as worthless, demented and burdensome weigh heavily on our ageing autobiographies. CG offers space to criticize the progressive medicalization of age and the “good ageing” narratives It aims to foreground polysemic discourses and meanings of ageing, their socio-cultural contexts (Pickard 2014), and the heterogeneity of ageing populations in order to create new narratives and new possibilities for being (Edström 2018). We move to bring CG and CFS into closer dialogue by addressing the key questions posed by Michael Godhe and Luke Goode (2018:153)

Who can speculate with authority and legitimacy about the future?

Whose imagined futures are deemed possible and plausible?

Whose imagined futures are silenced or dismissed as unrealistic or impractical?

Who benefits from promoting particular visions of the future?

Where do these ideas and visions of the future come from?

Whose Future?