Townsend Center for the Humanities

Stephen Katz examines contemporary commercially produced images of aging and associated seniors-oriented marketing strategies, suggesting that, as such images circulate and acquire representational validity, they obscure our view of the material realities of living, aging and dying. He argues that a radical "seniors culture" might go beyond the disciplining bounds of consumer practices and ideals–not to defy aging, but to defy the popular emphasis on agelessness, positivity and activity, and to cultivate an alternative politics of representation, "living in time, rather than against it.