This piercing essay contends with ageism through queer and anti-colonial perspectives to expose how accepted parameters of age and youth reinforce systemic inequality.

Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto starts with what it is not: a socio-economic argument against ageism, celebrating the ‘elderly’ as economically viable. Instead, Simon(e) van Saarloos presents a radical critique of conventional arguments against ageism, rejecting constructs of ‘age’ and ‘youth’ and assumptions of their inherent qualities.

 Drawing from personal experience, the manifesto offers a reckoning with how ageism overlaps with structures of white supremacy and patriarchy. Through the lens of crip and queer theory, as well as anti-carceral and anti-colonial perspectives on time, this piercing text provocatively calls for the abolition of age-related laws, reframing commonly held understandings about age from van Saarloos’s defiant perspective.

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ISBN13: 9781915743855
Format: Paperback / softback
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Publisher: MACK
Publication City, Country: United Kingdom
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Author Biography

Simon(e) van Saarloos is a writer and curator. They are the author of Take ‘Em Down: Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting (2021) and Playing Monogamy (2019), as well as several books in Dutch. They also write fiction and theatre. Van Saarloos works as an independent curator of public programming and artistic collaborations, such as the queer programming for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and ‘The Non-Monogamy Letters’ with Kim TallBear at ArtsEverywhere.ca.

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