How old are you? The more thought you bring to bear on the
question, the harder it is to answer. For we age simultaneously in
different ways: biologically, psychologically, socially. And we age
within the larger framework of a culture, in the midst of a history
that predates us and will outlast us. Looked at through that lens,
many aspects of late modernity would suggest that we are older than
ever, but Robert Pogue Harrison argues that we are also getting
startlingly younger--in looks, mentality, and behavior. We live, he
says, in an age of juvenescence.
Like all of Robert Pogue Harrison's books, "Juvenescence" ranges
brilliantly across cultures and history, tracing the ways that the
spirits of youth and age have inflected each other from antiquity
to the present. Drawing on the scientific concept of neotony, or
the retention of juvenile characteristics through adulthood, and
extending it into the cultural realm, Harrison argues that youth is
essential for culture's innovative drive and flashes of genius. At
the same time, however, youth--which Harrison sees as more
protracted than ever--is a luxury that requires the stability and
wisdom of our elders and the institutions. "While genius liberates
the novelties of the future," Harrison writes, "wisdom inherits the
legacies of the past, renewing them in the process of handing them
down."
A heady, deeply learned excursion, rich with ideas and insights,
"Juvenescence" could only have been written by Robert Pogue
Harrison. No reader who has wondered at our culture's obsession
with youth should miss it.
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