ABSTRACT
In a thought-provoking essay, Améry (1968) describes ageing as a conglomeration of symbols and associations which, all together, indicate decrement and the end of an era. Ageing in that sense does not describe a continuous process of time passing within a life-course perspective; rather, ageing demarcates the boundaries between the young and active on the one hand, and the old, passive and dependent on the other:
When we have passed the prime of life, society forbids us a self-image for the future, and culture becomes a burdensome culture which we no longer understand, which rather gives us to understand that, being the scrap iron of the mind, we belong to the waste dumps of the era. In the process of ageing, finally, we have to live with dying, a scandalous imposition, a unique humiliation we have to bear, not with humility, but as the humiliated.
(Améry 1968, p. 148; tr. Weicht)