COVID-19: Elderly People Between the Gerontological “Revolution" and the Gerontological “Expiation”

Abstract

The present paper raises certain dilemmas, debates and questions regarding attitudes and definitions that are being taken in relation with elderly people in the days of COVID-19. It is considered that the emancipatory and citizen achievements of ageing are being lost, arising processes of expiation that make them responsible for death and the anxiety that it awakens. The containment measures to which they are subjected have more to do with ambivalent processes, than with the fact that they are really the risk group par excellence. It is noted that these processes are occurring without being noticed, without being able to think or say. They take away citizenship from old people, make them precarious and older, without responsiveness. It is described as a movement from gerontological "revolution" to gerontological "expiation". It is related to the impossibility of providing integrative responses to situations that, however, require immediate responses to avoid reaching extreme situations of social and tanatopolitical crisis.

Keywords

• elderly people
• COVID-19
• expiation