Resumo

KLEIN CABALLERO, Alejandro. Ageism old age: decrepitude, vitality and… coronavirus. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2024, n.27, pp.66-84.  Epub 03-Maio-2024. ISSN 2007-4964.  https://doi.org/10.55555/is.27.478.

This work raises and analyzes the millenary tradition of ageism that has persisted and still persists in Western society. Fed by prejudices, myths, and the economy of the social imaginary, the scientific reading of aging is permanently delayed and postponed. In turn, the pandemic time of the coronavirus poses challenges and problems to ageism through a resurgence of the paradigm of decrepit aging, vulnerable and inevitably facing death. Finally, it is shown how the time of the coronavirus is used as a legitimizer of stigmatizing and confining perspectives that also respond to a perverse logic of scarcity, of what is left over, of what must be discarded, within a social fabric that is increasingly precarious and weak.

Palavras-chave : ageism; old age; coronavirus; rituals.