“Stagger, jerk, plonk.” Ageing and Embodiment and Christine Brooke-Rose’s Life, End Of

Ageing is, as Simone de Beauvoir reminds us in Old Age (La Vieillesse), the most inevitable of all bodily processes. If fortunate, we will all become part of this second existence. An increasingly radically altered life, ageing entails a phenomenological transubstantiation wherein we enter a new mod