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Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body
In this highly original study of the cultural assumptions governing our conception of people with disabilities, Lennard J. Davis argues forcefully against 'ableist' discourse and for a complete recasting of the category of disability itself. Enforcing Normalcy surveys the emergence of a cluster of concepts around the term 'normal' as these matured in Western Europe and the United States over the past 250 years. Linking such notions to the concurrent emergence of discourses about the nation, Davis shows how the modern nation-state contracted its identity on the backs not only of colonized subjects, but of its physically disabled minority. In a fascinating chapter on contemporary cultural theory, Davis explores the pitfalls of privileging the figure of sight in conceptualizing the nature of textuality. And in the treatment of nudes and fragmented bodies in Western art, he shows how the ideal of physical wholeness is both demanded and denied in the classical aesthetics of representation. Enforcing Normalcy redraws the boundaries of political and cultural discourse. By insisting that disability be added to the familiar triad of race, class, and gender, the book challenges progressives to expand the limits of their thinking about human oppression.
228 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 2, 2024
It pains me to give this four stars and not five; the insight (there's definitely an implied pun there, for those who've read the book) provided is outstanding. Even the chapter focusing especially on postmodern lit crit –– a field I'm not familiar with –– proved useful as I took care & time to sit with it.
The conclusion of this book, it seems, betrayed much of the message provided in the preceding chapters. Davis discusses the implications of disability being projected onto racial and cultural Others as a way of (re)inscribing their otherness. He discusses at length the artistic-erotic fragmentation of "the female form". Then, in the conclusion, he slips into that sketchy place too many disability scholars find themselves in –– claiming that "race, gender, and sexuality" have been discussed at length and that disability is something of an untouchable, final frontier. This, after he spent an entire book convincingly –– and correctly –– arguing that racial, sexual, and national discrimination (I mean both in the "separation" way and in the "prejudice/oppression" way) are and always have been infused with notions of the dis/abled body, citizen, whatever.
Although it's completely far of Davis to point out the dearth of disability-related discussion in many realms of critical theory, the way he sets up disability as one side of a dichotomy –– that all these abled (but) racialized, gendered Others are always already in opposition with disabled (but otherwise presumably white and male? And straight and cis? He barely mentions sexuality and I don't think ever mentions transgender/gnc embodiment) Others just reinforces the invisibility of disabled women of color. Annnnd, he kinda spent all of his chapters throwing a light on the harm such dichotomies cause for otherized bodyminds.
All that said, read the book. It's really, really good, and in the above ways, it's lacking. But I'll definitely be referencing this –– and referencing those references listed by Davis –– quite a bit in my future studies.
The conclusion of this book, it seems, betrayed much of the message provided in the preceding chapters. Davis discusses the implications of disability being projected onto racial and cultural Others as a way of (re)inscribing their otherness. He discusses at length the artistic-erotic fragmentation of "the female form". Then, in the conclusion, he slips into that sketchy place too many disability scholars find themselves in –– claiming that "race, gender, and sexuality" have been discussed at length and that disability is something of an untouchable, final frontier. This, after he spent an entire book convincingly –– and correctly –– arguing that racial, sexual, and national discrimination (I mean both in the "separation" way and in the "prejudice/oppression" way) are and always have been infused with notions of the dis/abled body, citizen, whatever.
Although it's completely far of Davis to point out the dearth of disability-related discussion in many realms of critical theory, the way he sets up disability as one side of a dichotomy –– that all these abled (but) racialized, gendered Others are always already in opposition with disabled (but otherwise presumably white and male? And straight and cis? He barely mentions sexuality and I don't think ever mentions transgender/gnc embodiment) Others just reinforces the invisibility of disabled women of color. Annnnd, he kinda spent all of his chapters throwing a light on the harm such dichotomies cause for otherized bodyminds.
All that said, read the book. It's really, really good, and in the above ways, it's lacking. But I'll definitely be referencing this –– and referencing those references listed by Davis –– quite a bit in my future studies.
May 12, 2008
This book is really brilliant and wonderful; by focusing on the concept of normalcy a it relates to disability, Davis shows how the hegemonic gaze "enforces" social ideas about beauty and value, enabling racism, sexism and ableism in similar ways. Davis's examination of disability provides a strong critique of "constructions" of the body, using examples from mythology as well as contemporary novels, films and art to flesh out his observations.
July 7, 2023
Quotes: "If I am a woman, a person of color, or even poor, my body reveals enough so that I don't have to explain why I am a woman, how I became black, or why I am poor. But the disabled body must be explained, or at least tolerate the inquisitive gaze (or the averted gaze) of the questioner."
"Their [the author's parents'] defense was to say 'We are as good as anyone else' – the subaltern's defensive response. And they were as good as any other person in the South Bronx, which is to say that they were pretty badly off." LMAO
"Preindustrial societies tended to treat people with impairments as part of the social fabric, although admittedly not kindly, while postindustrial societies, instituting 'kindness,' ended up segregating and ostracizing such individuals"
"When one speaks of disability, one always associates it with a story, places it in a narrative. A person became deaf, became blind, was born blind, became quadriplegic... by narrativizing an impairment, one tends to sentimentalize it and like it to the bourgeois sensibility of individualism and the drama of an individual story"
"The movements of the hands when people use sign language are controlled not by the motor part of the brain, which controls fine movements of the hand. but rather by the language areas in the brain called Broca's region" !!!!
"The deaf experience the text at the degree zero of writing, as a text first and foremost...The text would not then be transformed into an auditory translation but would be seen as language itself."
"Blindness has been adopted by Western culture as a metaphor for insight, while deafness has been a signifier for the absence of language."
"Sign language occupies the interstice where space and silence come together; sign language is the locus where the body meets language. Like the novel, another mediator between two worlds, the language of the deaf mediates between speech and silence."
"A cautionary word must be said on the decapitated and armless Venuses... Did vandals, warriors, and adolescent males amuse themselves by committing focused acts of violence, of sexual bravado and mockery on these embodiments of desire? An armless woman is a symbol of sexual allure without the ability to resist, a headless nude captures a certain kind of male fantasy of submission."
"Even in the recent film version [of Frankenstein] by Kenneth Branagh, the creature walks with a limp and speaks with an impediment. One cannot dismiss this filtering of the creature through the lens of multiple disability. In order for the audience to fear and loathe the creature, he must be made to transcend the pathos of a single disability... Disabled people are to be pitied and ostracized; monsters are to be destroyed; audiences must not confuse the two."
"Their [the author's parents'] defense was to say 'We are as good as anyone else' – the subaltern's defensive response. And they were as good as any other person in the South Bronx, which is to say that they were pretty badly off." LMAO
"Preindustrial societies tended to treat people with impairments as part of the social fabric, although admittedly not kindly, while postindustrial societies, instituting 'kindness,' ended up segregating and ostracizing such individuals"
"When one speaks of disability, one always associates it with a story, places it in a narrative. A person became deaf, became blind, was born blind, became quadriplegic... by narrativizing an impairment, one tends to sentimentalize it and like it to the bourgeois sensibility of individualism and the drama of an individual story"
"The movements of the hands when people use sign language are controlled not by the motor part of the brain, which controls fine movements of the hand. but rather by the language areas in the brain called Broca's region" !!!!
"The deaf experience the text at the degree zero of writing, as a text first and foremost...The text would not then be transformed into an auditory translation but would be seen as language itself."
"Blindness has been adopted by Western culture as a metaphor for insight, while deafness has been a signifier for the absence of language."
"Sign language occupies the interstice where space and silence come together; sign language is the locus where the body meets language. Like the novel, another mediator between two worlds, the language of the deaf mediates between speech and silence."
"A cautionary word must be said on the decapitated and armless Venuses... Did vandals, warriors, and adolescent males amuse themselves by committing focused acts of violence, of sexual bravado and mockery on these embodiments of desire? An armless woman is a symbol of sexual allure without the ability to resist, a headless nude captures a certain kind of male fantasy of submission."
"Even in the recent film version [of Frankenstein] by Kenneth Branagh, the creature walks with a limp and speaks with an impediment. One cannot dismiss this filtering of the creature through the lens of multiple disability. In order for the audience to fear and loathe the creature, he must be made to transcend the pathos of a single disability... Disabled people are to be pitied and ostracized; monsters are to be destroyed; audiences must not confuse the two."
November 21, 2019
Fascinating history of how disability has been created and exacerbated by the larger direction of our culture and society. It gets very symbolic as he examines disability in philosophy, language, mythology, and art. It was dizzying as he made analogies and connections that few minds would tie together about oppression of minorities in general. He speaks on the oppression of women and the emergence of the Deaf “ethnicity”. Very intriguing multi-disciplinary analysis of disability.
His thesis is that disability is not about the disabled individual as much as it is the result of a reaction resulting from a fear based perception that dominant culture has toward the disabled. This misappropriation of attention renders us impotent to address it openly, honestly and with humility. The result is the demonization, animalization, and consequent implicit oppression of the disabled in our industrialized utilitarian culture.
His final paragraph is a beautiful analogy that resonates deeply with me and my life experiences. He describes normalcy as an unintentionally woven veil that we wear on our collective human senses. He insists that we examine ourselves individually and collectively to see and remove this veil. Until then we will continue to struggle to liberate ourselves, as well as those that don’t fit this arbitrary definition of normal, from the self mutilation it imposes on our notions of value. Our greatest harm is done to ourselves based on our misperceptions of what our species is and where it is defined by and fits into nature.
“Only when the veil is torn from the bland face of the average, only when the hidden political and social injuries are revealed behind the mask of benevolence, only when the hazardous environment designed to be the comfort zone of the normal is shown with all its pitfalls and traps that create disability - only then will we begin to face and feel each other in all the rich variety and difference of our bodies, our minds, and our outlooks.”
In the future I’d like to tie this same reciprocally destructive cultural perception of reality to nature, our delusions that we are not participants of nature, and that through this we demand unhealthy unnatural anti-life restrictions and expectations on our natural environment and in turn our own understandings and interactions with economies of the larger body of our planet and the communities and people living on and within this body.
His thesis is that disability is not about the disabled individual as much as it is the result of a reaction resulting from a fear based perception that dominant culture has toward the disabled. This misappropriation of attention renders us impotent to address it openly, honestly and with humility. The result is the demonization, animalization, and consequent implicit oppression of the disabled in our industrialized utilitarian culture.
His final paragraph is a beautiful analogy that resonates deeply with me and my life experiences. He describes normalcy as an unintentionally woven veil that we wear on our collective human senses. He insists that we examine ourselves individually and collectively to see and remove this veil. Until then we will continue to struggle to liberate ourselves, as well as those that don’t fit this arbitrary definition of normal, from the self mutilation it imposes on our notions of value. Our greatest harm is done to ourselves based on our misperceptions of what our species is and where it is defined by and fits into nature.
“Only when the veil is torn from the bland face of the average, only when the hidden political and social injuries are revealed behind the mask of benevolence, only when the hazardous environment designed to be the comfort zone of the normal is shown with all its pitfalls and traps that create disability - only then will we begin to face and feel each other in all the rich variety and difference of our bodies, our minds, and our outlooks.”
In the future I’d like to tie this same reciprocally destructive cultural perception of reality to nature, our delusions that we are not participants of nature, and that through this we demand unhealthy unnatural anti-life restrictions and expectations on our natural environment and in turn our own understandings and interactions with economies of the larger body of our planet and the communities and people living on and within this body.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2023
I haven't read many books about the topic of disability, though I read one recently that centered disability as it relates to capitalism. That author posited that disability has only recently become an issue of import because capitalism can only see people in one of two ways: able to work or unable to work, so disability is not considered as a health issue or quality or life issue, but a "can we use you in the economy" issue. This book peripherally talks about that, but not in any effective way. Not that "disability as capitalism see it" is the only meaningful way to analyze the subject, mind you, but I don't see a better way to attack the subject, or a more pointed way of changing how disability is approached/seen.
Ultimately, my issue with this book is its thin premise, that disability predates/supercedes any other way of differentiating/discriminating against individuals. I simply don't agree, and all the esoteric scholarship utilized here did nothing to change that.
This book seems to fit only too many academic writing projects of recent years, where the author (over)utilizes known names, popular -isms, and moderately obscure theoretical/cultural/social/political arguments to seemingly (but not really) break new ground. There is zero doubt that disability and the disabled are misunderstood, manhandled, and marginalized at the altar of normal. But this book mostly widens the gap between the (poorly constructed and mostly imagined) poles of "normal" and "not normal (disabled/disability)", somehow falling into the trap of "my oppression is older/bigger than yours", as if any sort of discrimination, violence-against, or invisibility somehow wins the day.
Ultimately, my issue with this book is its thin premise, that disability predates/supercedes any other way of differentiating/discriminating against individuals. I simply don't agree, and all the esoteric scholarship utilized here did nothing to change that.
This book seems to fit only too many academic writing projects of recent years, where the author (over)utilizes known names, popular -isms, and moderately obscure theoretical/cultural/social/political arguments to seemingly (but not really) break new ground. There is zero doubt that disability and the disabled are misunderstood, manhandled, and marginalized at the altar of normal. But this book mostly widens the gap between the (poorly constructed and mostly imagined) poles of "normal" and "not normal (disabled/disability)", somehow falling into the trap of "my oppression is older/bigger than yours", as if any sort of discrimination, violence-against, or invisibility somehow wins the day.
February 2, 2024
This is probably a 4/5 book, but the second half really won me over with the discussion of classical statues. Overall, a very good survey of how literature/culture can be read through the lens of disability, as well as a political rally for greater awareness of the rights of disabled people.
The conclusion may be somewhat controversial in positing that other liberals sometimes repeat the mistakes of history by relegating disabled rights to a lower level of importance than the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women and people of colour. The point Davis was making here, and throughout the book, was not that these rights aren’t incredibly important but that disabled rights are EQUALLY important. After all, society routinely allows some disabled people to be completely excluded from school, when they can’t be bothered to invest time into proper access arrangements, ignoring their basic right to an education.
The conclusion may be somewhat controversial in positing that other liberals sometimes repeat the mistakes of history by relegating disabled rights to a lower level of importance than the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women and people of colour. The point Davis was making here, and throughout the book, was not that these rights aren’t incredibly important but that disabled rights are EQUALLY important. After all, society routinely allows some disabled people to be completely excluded from school, when they can’t be bothered to invest time into proper access arrangements, ignoring their basic right to an education.
August 31, 2022
Lennard Davis presents an argument that challenges the way you think about disability. He explores how disability was constructed through social movements, art, philosophy, and literature. He identifies the intersections of disability, race, and class. He provides arguments that explore disability as a concept outside of the disabled person, and through doing so, argues against the idea of the 'norm.' His writing is a little dense and can be difficult to follow at times, but overall it is worth putting the energy into in order to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which disability is pushed aside in our society and how this harms everyone.
July 16, 2009
Absolutely brilliant. Lennard Davis is THE authority on disability studies/normalcybody studies.
July 30, 2009
Incredible. Fascinating.
April 3, 2018
Amazing book. That covers topics related to disability and normalcy, the body and also has historical understanding a mush read.
June 6, 2016
Essential reading.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews