Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

This paper deploys both Levinasian and Derridean models of ethics to critique the developing field of biogerontology. Advanced anti-aging technologies – such as telomere-based gene therapies, stem cell therapies, and mitochondrial manipulation – continue to emerge as potential treatments for old age. The biopolitical move of framing aging as a disease-state holds various ethical implications, not least of concerning how the human as a category is established and maintained. Through an exploration of Levinasian ethics, I expose the problematic dimensions of these technologies that ultimately position the elderly as absolutely Other. Further, I draw on Derridean notions of the sovereign and the beast to explore the manifold ways the medical community is exploiting their power in violent regime of the erasure of age.