Four modes of embodiment in later life

Abstract

Today’s social gerontology of the body consists of an archipelago of different ideas and approaches. Social constructionism, phenomenology and other prominent frameworks come with distinctive and often unexamined assumptions about what a body is and does. These assumptions have given rise to competing understandings of key concepts, such as embodiment and the biological/material/physical body. In this paper, we propose an comprehensive approach to embodiment in later life that takes the phenomenological and existential significance of ambiguity as its starting point. Taking ambiguity seriously has the potential to overcome unfruitful conceptual distinctions. We draw on phenomenological philosophy, both in our methodological and theoretical choices. Our findings are based on an interview study that inquired into various aspects of older people’s lived experience (n=16; aged above 65). Our concrete theoretical frame builds on the notion of “bodily responsivity” derived from the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. Analysing the empirical material through the lens of bodily responsivity, we identify four distinct ways in which participants responded to the unfolding of ageing: the “bodily I,” “bodily it,” “bodily you” and “bodily we.”