Unbecoming blackness: the diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America

This paper addresses the relationship between ageing, gender, cultural norms, and the constitution of gendered body-subjects. It briefly discusses three conceptual approaches which have been used to understand ageing, gendered body-subjects: postmodernist/social constructionist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist feminist. It is argued that the first two approaches are entrenched in dualistic modes of thinking, and therefore can never construct ageing gendered body subjects as other than through the dualistic discourse of decline and cultural devaluation in Western consumer cultures. The third, however, appears to hold some promise for a more just and flexible way of accounting for the integrity of, and culturally valuing, the gendered body-subject in old age. Examples from writings on dance are used to illustrate this argument.