All Ages and None: Commentary on Helene Moglen's Ageing and Transageing

Abstract

Helene Moglen's article is especially welcome, given the paucity of psychoanalytic reflection on ageing. She usefully describes possible ways of managing the losses of ageing through accessing the multiple, decentered self-states embedded in our personal histories. However, I have some queries on her use of contrasting psychic topologies. In particular I wonder whether she is sometimes in danger of seeing images of former selves as being associatively “recovered” in the work of mourning that might be better seen as the more illusive “production” of presumptively anterior contexts and states of mind in the present. I also question how successfully Moglen's positioning of her notion of “transaging” somewhere between “transgender” and “transsexuality” serves to loosen up the vicious binary between “young” and “old. I would appreciate closer attention to the dreaded “feminization” of old age, noting the toxic sexism permeating cultures of ageing. Nevertheless, Moglen offers an excellent opening into this troubling topic.

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Lynne Segal

Lynne Segal, Ph.D., is Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck College, London University. Her books include Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism; Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men; Straight Sex: The Politics of Pleasure; Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology, Politics (Polity, 1999); and Making Trouble: Life and Politics (Serpent's Tail, 2007).