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Life Narratives and the Biological Reality of Ageing
Recorded March 16, 2023. A lecture by Martina Zimmermann (King's College London) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Cultural pessimism about ageing is grounded in a decline narrative that upholds youth as embodying the independent, vital self. Scientific accounts of senescence, by comparison, describe ageing as a life-time continuum involving ‘growth, development, and maturation … just as much as atrophy and degeneration’ (Shock, 1951, p. 1). This means culture adopts a partial perspective on the biological realities of ageing, taking outcomes of senescence research…
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