Old Age in Simone de Beauvoir and Martine Franck

What is it about?

Simone de Beauvoir's major work on aging, The Coming of Age, is enjoying renewed critical attention as issues of population aging and care are a central preoccupation in many societies. Shirley Jordan draws together Beauvoir's work with a rich body of photography on aging by Magnum photographer Martine Franck. In doing so she asks what we can learn about how both Franck and Beauvoir deal with the challenges of representing old age. She compares the epistemology of photography and the written text as far as understanding aging is concerned. She also looks at important issues in Beauvoir's philosophy of aging such as time, habit and the tension between immanence and transcendence. More particularly, she compares Franck's and Beauvoir's very different levels of attentiveness to women's aging. While Beauvoir's major text on aging focuses predominantly on case studies showing how exceptional men responded to their advancing years, Franck focuses largely on women. This article highlights, therefore, a puzzling blind spot in Beauvoir's work on aging.

Featured Image