Old Age in the Time of COVID: Reflecting with Simone de Beauvoir on Age, Alterity, and the Intersectionality of Oppressions

This paper begins from the author’s own discovery, during the COVIDepidemic, that she has become one of the “old.” The paper explores the ways in which the old are subject to distinctive forms of alterity and social exclusion, and to what Simone de Beauvoir (in La Viellesse; Old Age) calls a “conspiracy of silence,” in contemporary Western society. This exploration is then extended to document how the general conspiracy of silence has also long pervaded feminism and continues to pervade feminist theory. It is especially striking -- and troubling -- that considerations of old age are ubiquitously absent from current intersectional analyses of other major forms of oppression such as gender, race, and class. If feminist theory is effectively to fulfill its mission as a body of critical theory that bears on current oppressions and informs resistant political practices, then it urgently needs to extend its remit to examine old age. For old age is both an oppressive social location in itself and a site where multiple other oppressions intersect. Additionally, ignoring old age hampers theoretical work itself concerning such vital issues as vulnerability, power, justice, freedom, and possible groundings for political solidarity.