A challenge to expand our thinking about disability and oppression
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. Includes a new preface from the author.
What People Are Saying
"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
"Enforcing Normalcy was a shock to academia when it came out in 1995--it was one of the first stones in the foundation of an emerging discipline that located disability art, culture, and history in a single matrix. Thirty years later, Davis's pioneering study remains as important as the day it was published, and provides a unique intergenerational understanding of the history of disability studies." Joseph Grigley