By HLTD51 student KAKhalfan

“Binary ASCII CoD Ghost Art” by PSYCHOVII (2017)

The poet Dylan Thomas once said, ‘Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.’  In other words, poetry can neither fully be the author’s intention, nor can it be a group consensus that promises an objective, “final” reading of its content. Rather, poetry is the subjective, unprecedented perspective unique to each individual reading the river of metaphors, figurative language and the unknown. The flow of subjectivity between each line and stanza is what makes James Applewhite’s poem “Aging/Healing” such a dynamic representation of the ambiguity that generates the conventional binary of growing old and being healthy.

An arts-based approach (such as that of poetry) to understanding aging diverges considerably from the biomedical model, where “successful” aging has been defined as an elderly person that is disease-free (Carver & Buchanan, 2016). Though medical interventions may necessary for an older person to be physiologically healthy, arts-based interventions are equally as important for sustaining and creating health outside this pathological sphere (Charise & Eginton, 2018).

Rather than provide a close reading of Applewhite’s poem (I’ll leave that to my colleague Teaformeplease), what I aim to do in this post is to address a major limitation associated with the categorical binaries that the biomedical approach uses to define successful aging. To demonstrate this, I will consider how the title and contents of Applewhite’s poem makes salient an important distinction between arts-based approaches and biomedical approaches in defining successful aging.

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To begin with, “age studies [are] humanistic perspectives on aging draw[ing] on theory, texts, and practices from many professions including sociology, psychology, social work, liberal arts, anthropology, and art-based practices […] [that] share [a] concern […] to how older people are portrayed and regarded in the social context” (Charise & Eginton, 2018, p. 80).  A humanistic perspective can be defined as “an attitude toward research and inquiry that draws on the values common to the humanities: intrinsic worth and agency of human beings, their creative capacity, and the right to live in a state of justice, belonging, and self-actualization” (78). In comparison, conceptualizations of successful aging in a pathological framework relies primarily on binaries such as “old/young, sick/well, capable/not capable, remembering/forgetting, mind/body” (80).

Binaries, and forms of thinking that rely upon them, appear to drive the human mind in many processes: whether it be at a theoretical level of thought development and intuition, or at a technological level with code and programming. However, this drive is dangerous when an individual attributes these binaries to occur mutually exclusively. In other words, when an individual takes the ‘slash’ in binaries to represent only ‘or’ and not ‘and/or’. This is a major issue with the biomedical definition of successful aging as it conceptualizes aging in terms of categories that are nearly forbidden from mutually occurring. For example, according to this model it is impossible for an older person to be both sick and well.

However, an older person might be sick pathologically but that does not exclude them from being well socially ‘and/or’ mentally. This is evident in Applewhite’s poem as the title does not disenfranchise aging and being healthy. Instead, throughout the poem, Applewhite expands on these mutually occurring terms by equivocating successful aging with health beyond the pathological, and into the sphere of social groups and difference.

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Person A :“Please classify the Other:

A/B?

Or,

B/A?

Person B: “But what if I am…

Both A/B?”

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The biomedical frameworks reliance upon mutually exclusive terms for classifying successful aging is where humanistic perspectives of research is resourceful for facilitating and changing the outlook of successful aging. According to Charise & Eginton (2018), “a rigorous humanistic perspective understands older individuals living with age-related change as differently abled with lives that are enduringly meaningful” (p. 80). This does not entertain the belief that successful aging requires an older person to be free of disease and discomfort; rather, it involves other factors such as feelings of self-importance and usefulness.

However, advocating for the immediate prohibition of binaries would be  unrealistic. Due to this, I turn to the mentality of researchers in queer theory and gender studies who have long sought to counter the use of binaries to classify and subsequently divide what constitutes the notions of gender. According to gender studies researcher Penelope Eckert (2014), it is not “that we should dispense with binary classification, but that we should understand what they [binary classifications] represent in order to use them judiciously and to get beyond them where we can”. In achieving this, it is possible for researchers, therapists, and artists interested in aging to provide people with the resources required to age well.

In conclusion, an arts-based approach to successful aging allows for a shift away from the particular binaries that have served to classify successful aging in terms of mutually exclusive categories of healthy and sick. If a researcher classifies a ‘slash’ as only an ‘or’, that individual is supressing the potential of the terms (before and after the ‘slash’) to mutually occur within an aging person. However, the solution is not to eradicate the use of binaries –but for researchers from different disciplines to prioritize the use of the “and/or”; Applewhite’s poem, “Aging/Healing”, is a good way to consider a more judicial, expansive engagement with of such classificatory binaries.