No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern ThingsFrom the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman's madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility—encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties—combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies—the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
THE AGE OF ALZHEIMERS | 5 |
THE VIEW FROM THE RIVER | 9 |
Dulari | 13 |
Orientations | 15 |
WHATS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? | 18 |
TROPICAL SOFTENING | 20 |
EMBODYING PROBATE | 24 |
I | 160 |
II | 165 |
III | 168 |
OLD WOMEN AT THE POLLS | 171 |
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE VOICE | 174 |
THE FAMILIAL BODY | 177 |
IV | 181 |
TAKING VOICES SERIOUSLY | 183 |
A MEDICAL EXPLANATION | 25 |
THE SENILE BODY | 32 |
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PICARESQUE | 34 |
OF VARANASI | 39 |
World Wide Web | 45 |
Alzheimers Hell | 47 |
ALZHEIMERS SUBJECTIVITY AND THE OLD WEST | 53 |
THE GERIATRIC PARADOX | 60 |
OUBLIER POSTMODERN AGING | 70 |
A WITCHS CURSE | 72 |
THE SENILE CLIMACTERIC | 74 |
ALZHEIMERS FAMILY | 79 |
Nuns and Doctors | 85 |
Knowledge Practice and the Bad Family | 87 |
THE AGING IN INDIA SERIES | 89 |
INTERNATIONALIST SCIENCE | 93 |
THE GOLDEN ISLES | 100 |
GERONTOLOGY AS CULTURAL CRITIQUE | 103 |
THE VOLUNTEER AGENCY | 106 |
THE GERIATRIC CLINIC | 109 |
THE RETIREMENT ASHRAM | 113 |
THE OLD AGE HOME | 116 |
Aitaśa Pralāpa | 121 |
Memory Banks | 123 |
THE PROMISE OF RASAYANA | 127 |
THE MARKETING OF MEMORY | 133 |
MEMORY AND CAPITAL | 137 |
FORGETTING AS A PATH TO TRUTH | 142 |
Merĩ Latā Mahān | 149 |
The Philosophers Mother | 187 |
BALANCE AND ADJUSTMENT | 193 |
V | 200 |
VI | 205 |
VII | 208 |
VIII | 215 |
IX | 217 |
Chapati Bodies | 223 |
WEAKNESS AS STRUCTURE | 229 |
MUSLIMS AND OTHER SAINTS | 235 |
X | 242 |
XI | 244 |
XII | 251 |
A Child Is Being Lifted | 257 |
XIII | 260 |
XIV | 262 |
MADWOMEN AND WITCHES | 268 |
XV | 271 |
XVI | 275 |
BABAS AND THE STATE | 281 |
XVII | 285 |
The Body in Time | 291 |
XVIII | 296 |
XIX | 301 |
XX | 303 |
XXI | 321 |
XXII | 323 |
347 | |
Other editions - View all
No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things Lawrence Cohen Limited preview - 1998 |
No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things Lawrence Cohen No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Aging in India Alzheimer's disease American anthropology ashram Ayurvedic Baba Bad Family bakbak become behavior Bengali bhajan Brahman brain Calcutta Chamar chapatis Chyawanprash climacteric clinical cognitive colonial context critical culture daughter daughter-in-law death decline Delhi demented discussion dogs dying space elder elderly embodied emergence experience familial body father framed gender geriatric gerontology Ghar Kali Ghat Hindi Hindu household joint family Kali Yuga kamzorī Kumar lakaṛsunghvā language less lived male medicine memory loss mental mind moral mother Muslim Nagwa narrative Nascher Nava Nir neighborhoods normal offered old age old body old person old woman older parents pathology physician political powerful practice Ram Lakhan rasayana relations rishi sannyāsa sannyasi senile body senile dementia sense sevā Siranji sixtyish social Somita sons story structure suggested Tambe tion tonic University Varanasi vascular dementia voice weakness widows wife witch women young younger Zagreb