Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing

by Lynne Segal, Elaine Showalter (Introduction)

Overview

A leading feminist thinker reflects on her own life and the lives of other artists to explore the ups and downs of growing old.

This “thoughtful, reflective book” on aging “encourages people to keep dreaming, keep fighting, and perhaps most of all keep living” (Pop Matters).

How old am I? Don’t ask, don’t tell. As the baby boomers approach their sixth or seventh decade, they are faced with new challenges and questions of politics and identity.
 
In the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir, leading feminist thinker Lynne Segal looks at many of the issues facing the aged—the war of the generations and baby-boomer bashing, the politics of desire, the diminished situation of the older woman, the space on the left for the presence and resistance of the old, the problems of dealing with loss and mortality, and how to find victory in survival.

Brilliant, moving, and challenging, Out of Time is an urgent and necessary corrective to the assumptions and taboos that constrain the lives of the aged.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781681954
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	11/05/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	84,713
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lynne Segal is Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. Her books include Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism; Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men; and Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure. She co-wrote Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism with Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction Elaine Showalter xi

1 How Old Am I? 1

2 Generational Warfare 39

3 The Perils of Desire 75

4 The Ties That Bind 129

5 Flags of Resistance 173

6 Affirming Survival 225

Notes 281

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2013
British academic Segal (Is the Future Female?), a professor of psychology and gender studies at London’s Birkbeck College, gracefully explores the subject of aging in this combination memoir and analysis. Segal outlines fears about growing older and discusses our culture’s ingrained negative attitudes about the elderly female body, as well as men’s fear of losing their masculinity as they age. The author also highlights the joys of love and sexuality as one grows older. The book’s most politically charged section addresses the inevitable effects of the increasing class divide on the elderly; the younger generations, hit hardest by the recession, blame the baby boomers for the poor economy, while the older generations are already struggling with the fact that financial security is necessary for aging happily. While Segal seamlessly incorporates psychoanalytic theory and passages from writers like Simone de Beauvoir, John Updike, and Alice Walker, she also offers her own perspective as a feminist and scholar, reminding readers that the process of aging is never simple or straightforward. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

So what does it mean to age gracefully? How is this done? These questions are at the centre of a thoughtful new book from Lynne Segal.”
—Economist

“Out of Time is a thoughtful, reflective book. It encourages people to keep dreaming, keep fighting, and perhaps most of all keep living.”
—Pop Matters

“In this courageous study, Lynne Segal addresses the vicissitudes of ageing, a process that lies in wait for us all. She turns on the subject a critical eye honed by social psychology, psychoanalysis, feminism and radical politics. An original, probing and unsettling exploration.”
—Stuart Hall, author of Representation

“It’s about time for a book like Out of Time, compassionate, seasoned, honest, and wise, which asks questions about age but aims to enlighten, rather than frighten us. Read on!”
—Elaine Showalter, author of A Jury of Her Peers

“An international treasure … her beautifully written, deeply engrossing work … will inspire new generations.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich

“One of the most capacious readers of feminism and sexuality studies I have ever encountered.”
—Judith Butler

“Passionate, lucid, and shockingly candid … a clarion call to those who see feminism as a redundant cause.”
—Helen Walsh

From the Publisher

2013-09-25
Extended meditations on aging. Segal (Psychology and Gender Studies/Birkbeck, Univ. of London; Making Trouble: Life and Politics, 2008, etc.) opens this memoir/essay collection by admitting that the concept of aging, and of considering one's place in the world through the increasingly foggy lens of old age, stirs anxiety and even fear. We spend our youthful years moving through the world, trying to construct the "self" we want to present to our peers, and then we spend our older years pining for that youth, trying to hold on to all of its attributes. Segal questions whether there is a way to place positive value on the attributes of old age without paradoxically strong-arming the questions of physical health, mental integrity and the labyrinth of feeling young/looking old. The author explores the thorny questions of dependency, but she goes deeper than just the idea of the reversal of caregiving duties; she explores avenues of dependency, what it can mean in positive and negative terms for those roles to change, and how it never seems to be truly one way or another, except at birth and then at the parent's advanced old age. Segal walks us through a lively outline of the history of how culture(s) looks at aging, with stories rendering evil as unattractive and old, goodness as beautiful and young. It comprises only a small part of the book, though, as the author's primary concern is the inner workings of the psyche as age progresses; matters of ageism, relationships changing shape over the years and shifting responses of resistance to death--all these topics and more find voice in this powerful narrative. Segal refers to multiple cultural touchstones in service of her writing; this book should become a touchstone itself for those interested in aging.

Kirkus Reviews