Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body by Lennard J. Davis

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body Reviews

• 
  Sarah Cavar

  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.
  
  Lastly
• 
  Nick

  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.
• 
  Benjamin Janssen

  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.
• 
  Bekah

  Absolutely brilliant. Lennard Davis is THE authority on disability studies/normalcybody studies.
• 
  Jessica

  Incredible. Fascinating.
• 
  B

  Amazing book. That covers topics related to disability and normalcy, the body and also has historical understanding a mush read.
• 
  Chris Nagel

  Essential reading.