Abstract
The study introduces a framework by which insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis can be employed to offer a more nuanced understanding of how retirement is currently being reinvented. Building on an analysis of 49 stories in which early-career employees describe their retirement aspirations, the study explores the complexities of how individuals draw on retirement discourse to articulate who they are and what they want. The analysis suggests that the narrative construction of retirement is not only a space for becoming further attached to fantasies that align identity with existing power structures but also a space in which to work through such attachments and open up identity in transformative ways. The study contributes novel perspectives on the effects of the contradictions in current retirement discourse at the interstice of identity, discourse and power, offering new avenues for research on retirement and identity.
Highlights
Retirement, as the traditional end to and reward for a lifetime of working, is increasingly rare (Phillipson, 2012)
While the analysis aims at offering interesting new arguments in the ongoing debate (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000: 276) to better understand retirement discourse in the context of identity work (Smith and Dougherty, 2012: 474), it is constrained by being an “incomplete, contingent and corrigible activity” (Parker, 2005: 176)
The layers of the typology are interrelated and shed light on how individuals struggle with an inability to articulate the real as a general impediment in any discourse and how, when this struggle is pursued in greater depth, it results in particular positions toward underlying lack and the unique opportunities such positions offer for more or less liberating identity work
Summary
Retirement, as the traditional end to and reward for a lifetime of working, is increasingly rare (Phillipson, 2012). Retirement is dominated by a number of master narratives that stress the importance of economic value creation and the benefits of retaining a producer identity, as someone who derives status and self-esteem from contributing economic value to society (Sargent et al, 2012; Smith and Dougherty, 2012). Traditional retirement, as a leisurely and financially-secured time of life, is instead relegated to inducing a consumer identity, as someone who derives status and self-esteem from being able to purchase goods and services. The latter may be enjoyed but is risky as it leads to purposelessness and physical decline (Sargent et al, 2012). As more individuals compete for fewer jobs chasing the elusive state of being employable (Cremin, 2009), the desirability of a producer identity is further enhanced
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