Best Agers at the Intersection between Differentiating Age and Achievement
This project explores how human differentiations in terms of “age” and “perfor-mance/achievement” converge in current discourses on “successful aging”. It discusses (self )representations of “successful aging” in different media in order to ascertain what effects the new choreography of “age indifferent forms of aging” may affect normative constructions of age. On the one hand, extreme old age is connoted as positive in discourses of “best aging”; on the other hand, however, elderly high achievers may be seen as an implicit counter-narrative to “normal” aging, which is often associated with deficiency and disability.
Project team
Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee (PI)
Dr. Ruth Gehrmann (Postdoctoral Researcher)
Lisa Brau-Weglinski (PhD student)