Sexuality, Disability, and Aging

Drawing on her own experiences with late-onset disability and its impact on her sex life, along with her expertise as a cultural critic, Jane Gallop explores how disability and aging work to undermine one's sense of self. She challenges common conceptions that equate the decline of bodily potential and ability with a permanent and irretrievable loss, arguing that such a loss can be both temporary and positively transformative. With Sexuality, Disability, and Aging, Gallop explores and celebrates how sexuality transforms and becomes more queer in the lives of the no longer young and the no longer able while at the same time demonstrating how disability can generate new forms of sexual fantasy and erotic possibility.

"For Gallop, theory offers solace in the face of life’s difficulties, and the book is often quietly moving. . . . Her use of theory isn’t about blowing up previous thought; it’s about finding consolation, which literature or philosophy is often said to provide."