Politics of Aging in American Literature

该项目的目的是在日本的美国文学研究中建立老龄化政治。老龄政治学是基于20世纪90年代美国女权主义者提出的对老龄化的新认识。这种新的观点认为，老龄化不是一种自然现象，而是由社会意识形态构成的。这一观点带来了新的老龄化方面，我们有多种选择的方式，我们的老龄化。然而，这些选择并不存在于自由的私人空间中，而总是存在于社会话语的政治领域中。因此，老龄政治观的重要性在于，我们可以通过老龄政治观来明确老龄的政治性。这一思想也为美国文学研究提供了新的视角。老龄化政治学的研究重点是人物如何反映老龄化的政治本质，或者作家如何决定自己的老龄化方式。老龄化政治学的研究为美国文学研究开辟了新的领域。本项目最重要的成果是2012年出版的《美国文学中的老龄化政治学》（日文）。金泽智编辑。京都：Shorai-sha，2012年）。在本书中，我们收集了十篇论文，每一篇论文都通过关注这些作品中反映的老龄化的各个方面，为现代美国文学的一些作品提供了新的视角。这是确立日本美国文学研究中老龄政治学的重要一步，也是通过引入新的论点来活跃学术界的重要一步。因此，本项目取得了显著的成果.

The aim of this project was to establish the politics of aging in the study of American Literature in Japan. The politics of aging is based on the new understanding of aging proposed by American feminists in 1990s. This new view holds that aging is not a natural phenomenon but in fact constituted by social ideology. This view brings about new dimensions of aging where we have multiple choices of the way of our aging. However, these choices are not available in the free private space but always in the political field of social discourse. Hence the importance of the idea of politics of aging, by which we can make clear just this political nature of aging. The idea is also useful for providing a new insight to the study of American Literature. By focusing on how characters reflect the political nature of aging or the way authors decide their own way of aging, the idea of politics of aging brings forth new field in the study of American Literature.The most important achievement of our project is a book we published in 2012, The Politics of Aging in American Literature(In Japanese. Ed. Satoshi Kanazawa. Kyoto: Shorai-sha, 2012). In this book we collect ten papers, each of which sheds a new light on some works of modern American Literature by focusing various aspects of aging reflected in these works. This is really an important step to establish the politics of aging in American Literature Study in Japan and invigorate the academic filed by introducing the new point of argument. Thus we have made a significantachievement by this project.