Ageing as Adaptation

In traditional gerontological terms, adaptation is usually understood as the production of physical aids to mitigate the impairment effects caused by age-related disabilities, or as those alterations organisations need to make under the concept of reasonable adjustment to prevent age discrimination (in the UK, for example, age has been a protected characteristic under the Equality Act since 2010). This article will be the first to examine ageing in relation to theories of adaptation within cultural studies and the humanities. It is thus an interdisciplinary intervention within the field of cultural gerontology and cultural theories of adaptation. Adaptation studies in cultural studies and the humanities have moved away from fidelity criticism (the issue of how faithful an adaptation is to its original) towards thinking of adaptation as a creative, improvisational space. We ask if theories of adaptation as understood within cultural studies and the humanities can help us develop a more productive and creative way of conceptualising the ageing process, which reframes ageing in terms of transformational and collaborative adaptation. Moreover, for women in particular, this process of adaptation involves engagement with ideas of women’s experience that encompass an adaptive, intergenerational understanding of feminism. Our article draws on interviews with the producer and scriptwriter of the Representage theatre group’s play My Turn Now. The script for the play is adapted from a 1993 co-authored book written by a group of six women who were then in their 60s and 70s, who founded a networking group for older women.