Active aging—spunky survivorship? Discourses and experiences of the years beyond breast cancer

Recent critical gerontology has drawn attention to the origins, functions and consequences for elders of the ‘successful aging’ discourse. In this paper we describe parallels between successful aging and what we are calling ‘spunky survivorship,’ the contemporary subject position made available to women in the years after a breast cancer diagnosis. The central focus of the paper is a study about the intersections between a dominant discourse of …