ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together queer theory and age studies with the aim to shed light on what we may understand as queer aging and on what it might mean to queer aging. The central claim is that age studies can fruitfully apply queer theorists’ work to question established norms of thinking about age and aging, such as for example, perceptions of aging as an exclusively biological process, and to illustrate instead how age, like gender and sexuality, is a socially and culturally constructed category. The chapter focuses specifically on the role that (cultural as well as fictional) narratives of aging can play in proliferating specific ideas of growing older but also in actively obscuring certain ways of imagining old age. Queering aging thus frequently means questioning unspoken norms: for example, the ways in which heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, and able-mindedness are frequently treated as prerequisites for successful aging. In turn, this chapter also highlights a range of narratives that offer alternative ways of imagining family, intergenerational support, the future, and the life course itself.
