In their 2017 paper titled ‘Queering Ageing Futures’ (Sandberg & Marshall, 2017), Linn Sandberg and Barbara Marshall explored the potential of cultural gerontology to move beyond the normativities of ‘successful’ ageing. They proposed a queering of ageing futures that disrupt the ways that expectations of a good later life and happy ageing futures are seen to adhere to some bodies and subjectivities over others. Drawing on feminist, queer, and crip theory, they extended critiques of successful ageing to interrogate the assumptions of heteronormativity, able-bodiedness and able-mindedness that shape the dividing lines between success and failure in ageing, and inform attempts to ‘repair’ damaged futures. They called for more inclusive visions of living a good life in old age and suggested that feminist theory, queer theory and crip theory have particular insights to offer in envisaging alternative futures.
The authors in this special section had been pursuing revisioning ageing research in intersectional areas of expertise, responding to or coinciding with Sandberg and Marshall’s work. It was apparent to us that there was scope to add further diverse and divergent experiences of ageing, especially those grounded in the lived experience and cultural representations of Indigenous peoples, People of Colour, and Black people, who are multiply marginalised. These perspectives are important to further rethink ageing and disrupt negative stereotypes associated with binaries of success/failure; abled/disabled; healthy/unhealthy that align with the successful ageing paradigm. A further ambition of this collection is to test out and develop the utility of using these theories as a lens to reimagine ageing, by applying them to a range of different empirical datasets. In so doing, we aim to generate new understandings of ageing involving new conceptual frames.
Jones, R., Changfoot, N., & King, A. (Eds.). (2022). Special Section: Revisioning ageing futures: Feminist, queer, crip and decolonial visions of a good old age. Journal of Aging Studies, 63. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-aging-studies/vol/63/suppl/C#article-11
