Description du projet
Reconsidérer la sexualité des femmes âgées
Le désir sexuel d’une personne va probablement changer avec l’âge. L’asexualité est définie comme un manque d’attirance sexuelle pour les autres ou un manque d’intérêt pour le sexe. Les femmes plus âgées sont généralement perçues comme étant asexuées. Cette perception a conduit à exclure les femmes âgées de la recherche. Par ailleurs, leur sexualité est considérée comme taboue. Le projet LiLI, financé par l’UE, vise à inverser cette tendance dans la recherche et à promouvoir des études sur les femmes d’un certain âge et la sexualité. Cela ouvrira la voie à des changements significatifs dans les théories féministes sur le vieillissement et le désir sexuel. Une équipe pluridisciplinaire de chercheurs dans les domaines de l’anthropologie, de la géographie sociale, des études culturelles et de la philosophie féministe développera une recherche ethnographique radicale et multiméthode pour comprendre la sexualité des femmes âgées.
Objectif
Almost half a century ago, Simone de Beauvoir (1970) denounced what she called the ‘conspiracy of silence’ in public and scholarly debates about women growing older. Little has changed since then. In spite of the expanding number and proportion of older women in the population and the changing cultural norms regarding sexuality, older women are still often overlooked in research, and their sexuality in particular is still a taboo. Older women are supposed to become asexual and when their sexuality is considered, it is interpreted within a medicalized and phallocentric framework that starts from young adult standards. So far, social sciences and humanities have failed to develop a viable alternative to this line of thinking. The proposed project aims to rectify this significant gap in research and break the silence around older women and sex. A multi-disciplinary team of scholars with expertise in anthropology, social geography, cultural studies and feminist philosophy will collaborate and tackle challenging research questions in order to acquire a fundamentally new, affirmative understanding of women’s later life sexuality. A radical multi-method ethnographic research methodology will be developed, (1) based on long-term participant observation in various settings and (2) with a specific focus on ‘unruly’ sexual strategies of older women across different social categories. By uncovering counter-hegemonic knowledge of older women—knowledge that usually stays under the radar of academic attention—the project has great potential to revolutionize how we look at women, old age, and sex. A shift in thinking is needed because the prevalent conceptualizations are blatantly oppressive for older women. Moreover, the project’s methodological-theoretical design that brings older women’s subversive sexual strategies to the forefront of research has also the potential to open the way for radical changes in feminist theorizations of intersectional power, sexual desire and ageing.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitution d’accueil
9000 Gent
Belgique