Konsten att leva länge-Föreställningar om livets förlängning i handböcker 1700-1930

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to explore discursive changes in conceptions of life course and ageing. In a sense the Life- Span embodies the boundaries of human existence, but furthermore, it symbolizes a discursive system with distinctive symbols and meaning, that regulates and re-construct a cultural context. Hence, a cultures notion of the Life-Span also reveals its images and apprehensions of ageing and life itself. On a Meta level discourses of the Life-Span give us information on apprehensions of the human existence. As such, handbooks, and also other literature on life-extension, provide an interesting field for the study of ageing and humanity. I am particularly concerned with the relationship between knowledge and power in the distribution of prolongevity and body- technologies, and as a referential frame in the definition of normal and deviant bodies and behaviour. The interest is to trace discursive changes and reconstructions of the ageing body, as well as, to se what has remained persistent over time. In general my questions involve the relationships between body and subject, power/truth and normality/deviance, more specific questions have been: What are the key statements about prolongevity and the ageing body? What is pictured as the ideal ageing and who is distributing this picture? On the contrary what is perceived as deviant? What technologies are presented in to obtain a longer life?