Enforcing the Cursed Construct of Conceptualizing Normalcy

Enforcing the Cursed Construct of Conceptualizing Normalcy

Written for DSAB 620

Reaction Paper 4

Keith Murfee-DeConcini

In his 1995 book Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, disability scholar Lennard Davis talks extensively about the ongoing struggle of the deaf community to be recognized as an oppressed social class. He links not only the deaf community but also the disabled community as a whole into “the familiar triad of race, class and gender.” Before Davis explores the history of deaf people and their culture, he introduces us, in Chapter 2 “Constructing Normalcy,” to how the term “normal” came to be used. Oddly enough, the concept of normalcy only entered the English language around the middle of the nineteenth century. (p. 24) It was a term used to measure the most common human traits and behaviors and labeling them normal. Being normal or average was considered a good thing.

This was in contrast to the ideals expressed by classical Greek paintings of beauty, even though the conceptualization of what it means to be normal were heavily influenced by these ideals.  These paintings used the beautiful subject as an ideal to which one aspires. What the painting didn’t show is that this picture of beauty, perchance a woman, is perfection, with each part (i.e. face, neck, hips etc.…) being borrowed from different women. Thus, the ideal image of woman is actually made of several women, something that no one can actually attain.  (p. 25)

The ideal form is unattainable by imperfect beings. At one end, there is the ideal body and at the other end, the grotesque. As Davis puts it, “By contrast, the grotesque as a visual form was inversely related to the concept of the ideal and its corollary that all bodies are in some sense disabled. In that mode, the grotesque is a signifier of the people, of common life.” (p. 25) The common or normal framework was born out of the creation of statistics in 1749. The fascination of working with statistics captured the American public during the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century.

The concept of a norm differs from the ideal by implying “that the majority of the population must or should somehow be part of the norm.” (p. 29) With the rise of norms, a corollary concept was created to classify those who fall outside the bell shaped curve of what is considered normal as the deviants. People with disabilities were one of the groups who fit into the classification of deviant, defective or more plainly, undesirable. As Davis tells us, “…eugenics became obsessed with the elimination of ‘defectives,’ a category which included the ‘feebleminded,’ the deaf, the blind, the physically defective, and so on.” (p. 31)

In 1883, Alexander Graham Bell, who was the creator of the telephone, stoked eugenical fear against deaf people by proclaiming in his book (Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race) “a tendency among deaf-mutes to select deaf-mutes as their partners in marriage” (1969), which he warned could lead to a dire consequence:  the creation of a race of deaf people. (p. 32) This proclamation and others like it inspired great fear in the public mindset of not only deaf people but all who were known to be or suspected to be “deviant.” As they were not on the bell shaped curve of “normalcy,” they must be condemned, at the very least. It may seem unimaginable but the lingering effects of this fear still exist today and affect people with disabilities often on a daily basis.

I confront this every day. Since I have a slight speech impediment and a higher pitched voice, people on the phone constantly mistake me for a woman. While this is not the worst thing in the world, it can be pretty annoying, especially having to contend with this every day. After all what kind of parent would name a girl, Keith? The answer is unsurprisingly obvious: no one!

I live in New York City, a city of over 8 million people of seemingly every background and every accent possible. Yet when people hear me speak for the first time, they either dumb me down as if I’m still a child or they lock themselves up with fear. Some might wonder if I’m drunk or on drugs. Let me tell you, if I was drunk or on drugs, it would have to be all the time, which means I would most likely be dead in six months. Again, these are small problems to deal with in a vast world of problems; the daily occurrence of said small problems, however, can add up pretty fast.

While we as a society have moved past the eugenics movement---or so we would like to believe---the lingering fear from that era still remains in the forefront of the human psyche. The fear of the “deviant” came alive in that era and it still lingers today. So have we as a society really moved past the eugenics movement after all? One thing is certain, the effects of social fear that even associating with someone who is considered “deviant” might make oneself deviant, as if deviance is something one can catch, continues to corrupt the diversity of the human experience. We owe that corruption in a large part to the concept of normalcy.  

References:

Bell, Alexander Graham. 1969. Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race. Washington, DC: Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf.

Davis, Lennard J. 1995. Chapter 2 “Constructing Normalcy” In Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso, Imprint of New Leaf Books.