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- Title
‚Freiwilliger Abschied‘? Die Imagination des Gerontozids als Verhandlung der Lebensdauer in der Moderne.
- Authors
Schwieren, Alexander
- Abstract
The apprehension of a forthcoming 'obligation to die' which is currently articulated in various occasions is not only a reaction upon the debates within health care policy on rationing and the discourse on euthanasia. It also refers to a hard to define cultural condition which currently seems to justify the possibility to decide about the end of one's own life. Hence, the article analyses the conceptual history of 'Altentötung' (killing the elderly) and its artistic staging at the beginning of the 21st century. The cultural-historic dimension of the current debates is visible in both cases. In doing so, the difference between premodern practices and their narrativization or modern imaginations respectively can be elaborated. The apparatus of this difference consists of the fundamental concept of population. From here, a political interest for rationing regarding old age evolves just as well as a culture which strives to annul the naturalness of dying. The immediate results of these developments include the risk of a politically motivated premature death.
- Subjects
KILLING of the elderly; HEALTH care rationing; EUTHANASIA; EARLY death; RIGHT to die; GERONTOLOGY; POWER over life &; death
- Publication
Historical Social Research, 2009, Vol 34, Issue 4, p111
- ISSN
0172-6404
- Publication type
Article