What Enhancement Techniques Suggest about the Good Death
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
What Enhancement Techniques Suggest about the Good Death. / Lassen, Aske Juul; Andersen, Michael Christian.
In: Culture Unbound, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2016, p. 104-121.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - What Enhancement Techniques Suggest about the Good Death
AU - Lassen, Aske Juul
AU - Andersen, Michael Christian
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - The contemporary increase in life expectancy in Western countries has led to an intensified focus on good ageing processes as a way to manage ageing populations. We argue that while qualifications of the ageing process such as active and healthy ageing endeavour to compress morbidity through enhancement techniques, the idea of the good old age also implicitly tells a tale about the ‘good’ death. We explore how current discourses depict old age as an active, engaged and independent life phase and construct a specific idea of the good death as one that is quick and painless. By engaging with literature on ageing, death and enhancement technologies as well as current Danish healthcare initiatives, we examine the paradoxical, contemporary notion of death as natural, quick, painless and controllable. Danish rehabilitation programmes are provided as an example of specific enhancement techniques that through motivation and physical activity orchestrate the good death in a body that has been as healthy as possible for as long as possible. However, when such techniques become a moral injunction rather than a choice, questions arise concerning the relationship between autonomy and death. We argue that the discursive construction of the good death happens in tandem with enhancement techniques that postpone death, and that this postponement of death has increasingly become more of an imperative than an autonomous decision.
AB - The contemporary increase in life expectancy in Western countries has led to an intensified focus on good ageing processes as a way to manage ageing populations. We argue that while qualifications of the ageing process such as active and healthy ageing endeavour to compress morbidity through enhancement techniques, the idea of the good old age also implicitly tells a tale about the ‘good’ death. We explore how current discourses depict old age as an active, engaged and independent life phase and construct a specific idea of the good death as one that is quick and painless. By engaging with literature on ageing, death and enhancement technologies as well as current Danish healthcare initiatives, we examine the paradoxical, contemporary notion of death as natural, quick, painless and controllable. Danish rehabilitation programmes are provided as an example of specific enhancement techniques that through motivation and physical activity orchestrate the good death in a body that has been as healthy as possible for as long as possible. However, when such techniques become a moral injunction rather than a choice, questions arise concerning the relationship between autonomy and death. We argue that the discursive construction of the good death happens in tandem with enhancement techniques that postpone death, and that this postponement of death has increasingly become more of an imperative than an autonomous decision.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - aging population
U2 - 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.160928
DO - 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.160928
M3 - Journal article
VL - 8
SP - 104
EP - 121
JO - Culture Unbound
JF - Culture Unbound
SN - 2000-1525
IS - 2
ER -
ID: 157281374