Speaking an Elderly Body Into a Visible Space

Abstract

Elderly bodies have been pushed off television screens, rushed off sidewalks, and swerved off freeways, almost entirely socially abandoned. Reflecting on this lived reality, this narrative attempts to put an elderly body at the forefront of this discussion of embodiment and social (in)difference. In these pages, I reflect on defining moments in my research field spent with my closest informant, my “Senior Friend,” Joan. In performing these moments for readers, I privilege the body as lived and storied, and the narrative complicated by class, age, and ageism.