ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the experience of suffering among older adults in the larger global ecological context of the Anthropocene Age. Recognizing the contribution of human activity to such suffering, we draw on the perspective of ph¬enomenology to help illuminate the world-constituting role of human subjectivity in the development of consciousness of suffering, with elaboration of philosophic cultural science theory and transcendental theory of method. In a re-conceptualization, re-symbolizing, and de-genderizing of the Maternal in that process of constitution, the Maternal is reframed and re-envisioned as a symbol of generativity and pure possibility that is invariant and makes itself manifest in the world in a manifold of appearances.
We advance an ethical paradigm that serves as a grounding and social context for older persons’ positioning, signifying, or manifesting their agency, allowing them to resist oppressive structures and reconstitute social power and social practices. Through engagement and collaborative practices that build community and solidarity, the Maternal presents itself as a cosmos, an affordance, and a threshold of openness to experience that can foster agency, generativity, hope, and dialectical processes of disruption and dialogue.
