Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

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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 constructed 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 a 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.

Reviews

Enforcing Normalcy was identified as a pioneering work soon after its initial publication. Now it is recognised as a true classic in the field of cultural disability studies and the humanities more broadly. Beautifully written and extensively researched, it remains essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the normative backdrop against which disability is so often characterised. Certainly it will always be a point of reference in my own work on sociocultural representations of disability. -- David Bolt, Director of Centre of Culture and Disabilities Studies, Liverpool Hope University

Author Bio

Lennard J. Davis is a Distinguished Professor emeritus of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is also a Professor of Disability and Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences, as well as a Professor of Medical Education in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Davis is also the award-winning author of 11 books, including Enforcing Normalcy, Factual Fictions, and Resisting Novels. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, and The Chicago Tribune, among other publications.