CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Susan Watkins AGEING, APOCALYPSE AND ADAPTATION
In the global north, ageing is imagined in terms of apocalypse, as a disaster for both the individual and society, which can be seen in the prominence of metaphors for ageing futures like the 'silver tsunami' and the 'demographic ticking timebomb'. Challenging this damaging narrative of ageing as a personal and social apocalyptic disaster, which associates children with the future and older people with the past, this project will be the first to propose a new theory of ageing as a process of adaptation. Like adaptation studies in cultural studies and the humanities, which have moved away from fidelity criticism (the issue of how faithful an adaptation is to its original) towards thinking of adaptation as a creative, improvisational space (Hutcheon, 2013), I argue that we can replace apocalyptic narratives of ageing with an open, adaptive response to the ageing process. This project will conduct a sustained examination of speculative fictions focused on ageing, which offer creative alternatives to apocalyptic visions of ageing futures. The project will consider texts from across the spectrum of speculative writing, including ones from the Global South, that are creative in their approach to ageing and make use of adaptative strategies to rework and transform our engagement with ageing futures.