Abstract
Older protagonists in novels and stories have appeared more frequently in recent decades in modern Hebrew/Israeli literature, and yet there is a dearth of scholarly literature about this phenomenon; this dissertation will be the first full-length manuscript to explore representations of aging in this literature. I employ a multidisciplinary approach calling on a variety of academic fields including literary age studies, cultural gerontology/critical age studies, feminist, gender, queer, and sexuality studies, modern Hebrew literary studies, and Israel studies. Through close readings of Israeli prose fiction from the 1980s to the present, this project broadly aims: (1) to expose and challenge the prevalent and enduring stereotypes and misrepresentations of aging and the aging subject; (2) to recover, elucidate, and center the stories of older characters, especially those on the margins of this marginalized cohort; (3) to explore the varied permutations and (taboo) iterations of aging bodies; (4) to propose aging as a stage of the lifecycle that is unpredictable and transformative, and that is defined by renewal, and “becoming;” and (5) to recognize age/ing as a salient category from which to identify the priorities and anxieties of the nation both looking back towards its beginnings and in the present. Each chapter contains two texts that examine an issue highlighting obstacles and/or provocations facing aging subjects and presenting opportunities for their growth. These issues are: (queer) desire and sexuality (Chapter 1); performative age, or the imperative to deny aging and to remain “ageless,” and performances of youth (Chapter 2); dependency and disability in deep old age and the counternarrative of interdependence (Chapter 3); and traumatic (embodied) memory (Chapter 4).