ABSTRACT
This book aims to ‘de-territorialize’ (Braidotti, 2002) ‘older’ from normative discourses of ageing. Beginning with the embodied ‘older’ self engaged in a practice of body modification, this ambition is pursued through a nuanced descriptive, ethical and political reading of ‘older’ identity politics nested within the contemporary ethico-political terrain of self-care. Ethically sensitive and theoretically attuned to statements with political momentum, this approach provides insight into the wilful reformation of discourses at an early stage of their transformation emerging from a ‘virtual fracture’ (Foucault, 1988a: 36) in the politics of truth. Statements such as ‘designing older rather than denying ageing’, ‘to look better not younger’ and ‘ageing disgracefully’ exceed semantic differentiation. Indeed, they direct us toward transgressive possibilities that rupture the system of thought that has hitherto oppressed the constitution of the ‘older’ subject. This wilful reformation of discourse provides evidence of an active cultural politics of ‘older’ emerging from the critically reflexive engagement of older people with cosmetic surgery. The argument of this book is that this engagement constitutes a ‘cutting critique’ of ‘ageing’ discourses enmeshed in an aesthetic mode of subjectivation that underpins a ‘new ethics of old age’ (Foucault, 1994a: 110).
