DEFINISSEURS CULTURELS ET REPERES INDIVIDUELS: LE RAPPORT AU CORPS CHEZ LES PERSONNES AGEES

In ageing the relationship to the body refers to the way in which old age is defined in our representational systems. This defining process intervenes on a social and individual level. The individual relationship to ageing is influenced by the way in which our society prefers a spatial or corporeal definition of old age to a temporal one and by the way in which it assigns a certain position to the individual on the ageing scale. In reference to this defining process different conceptions regarding the relationship between corporeity and ageing appear. Drawing on a survey of the literature and an exploratory interview conducted among elderly, three types of corporeity are disclosed. First, the diagnosed corporeity, which is also defined by the medical system in chronic illness terms, reflects our fear of the irreversibility and the deterioration which we associate with this stage of life. Second, the imagined and projected corporeity of the elderly by which they themselves react to their devalorised image offered by society. Third, the lived and acted corporeity in which the corporeal signs reflect the social, relational, and behavioral space. In these different domains the concept of strategy seems appropriate to learn how the aged copes, at the margins, with his/her life conditions which are very difficult as well in a material, social as symbolic sense.