Deconstructing the Discourse on Elderly Women: Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population

Abstract

Elizabeth Moon’s science fiction novel Remnant Population (1996) deconstructs the dominant ideology or discourse regarding elderly women, distancing us from our beliefs we have about our society and enabling us to see them in a new context. In an extrapolated space and time where it has become possible to migrate to a distant planet using cryotechnology or low temperature tanks, the story is centered on Ofelia, an elderly woman, who is determined to remain alone on the colony planet. The identity of an elderly woman in an unfamiliar and strange science fiction context enables cognitive estrangement, prompting readers to constantly doubt and ultimately reconsider their prejudices against elderly women at the fundamental level. This process allows Remnant Population to defy the genre expectations of science fiction and old-age narratives, reappropriating and disrupting the oppressive interpellation of the elderly female. This resistance is supported by Ofelia’s interactions with the aliens; Ofelia and the aliens, all beings othered by human society, transcend their respective positions and stand on the side of the other and practice becoming a minority who feels pain and fear with the same intensity, thereby moving beyond the traditional binary oppositional power structure to create a new existence. Through this process, Remnant Population reminds us that modern rationalism and the philosophy of identity are the main culprits of the oppressive discourse on elderly women, and it presents a solution to overcome the ethics of difference established between fixed identities.