Contributions of Vygotsky's cultural historical theory to thinking about aging (Atena Editora)

Abstract

This paper is part of a doctoral study whose context of observation was a group of elderly women participating in an Open University for the Third Age (UATI). Immersed in this experience we found contradictions between our perceptions, which revealed the dynamism and complexity of those elderly women and the scientific/academic discourse based on the perspective of a naturalized aging, with a certain predestination to sameness and to losses resulting from organic deterioration. It was in Vygotski's historical and cultural perspective that we found support to substantiate the perception that the aging process is part of the uninterrupted flow of humanization, because it is given over to what is lived, to relationships and affections, which are not a privilege of a specific age, but unfold throughout life. This way, the objective of this work was to establish approximations between the Vygotskian theory and aging. To this end, we separated the text into four units of meaning from which we made our considerations, namely: the issue of age; the social situation of development; the phenomenon of perezhivanie and the group context. We conclude that, when the look is for the construction of creative and potent forms of existence in old age, the cultural historical approach provides valuable contributions, for it makes it possible to think of aging in the uninterrupted course of human development and helps the understanding of groups of elderly people as privileged spaces for transformation.