---
title: Constructing Normalcy
date: 2021-03-13
tags: 障礙研究, 北大
---

# 〈Constructing Normalcy〉

[TOC]

* 規範與可測量性（ be calculated）：
* *We live in a world of norms...... There is probabl y no area of contemporary life in which some idea of a norm, mean, or average has no been calculated. (p.3)*

- 障礙研究需要回到「規範」（norm）本身──亦即我們如何建構「正常」（normalcy）
- *(we) must return to the concept of the norm , the **normoal body. ....... I would like to focus not so much on the construction of disabilityas on the construction of normalcy.***
- *...... because the "problem" is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the **way that normalcy is constructed to create the "problem" of the disabled person.***

- 「norm」的詞源學：「規範」這詞具備現代意義上的「指稱某種正常狀態」，在英語世界中是19世紀中期的事情

- *the word "normal" as "**constituting, conforming to , not deviating or different from, the common type or standard, regular, usual**" only enters the English language around 1840.*
- norm早先的意思是指木匠的工具：「*......Previously, the word had meant "perpendicular"; the carpenter's squared, called a "norm,".....*」。「規矩」原本指稱的意思是「規」跟「矩」。而非現在意義上的「規矩」。
- *the "norm," in the modern sense, has only been in use since around 1855, and "normality" and "normalcy" appeared in 1849 and 1857. ...... it is possible to date the coming into consciousness in English of an idea of "the norm" over the period of 1840 - 1860.*

- 理想的身體（the ideal body）是什麼？

- 神話中的隱喻，理想的身體就是眾神的身體（希臘神話中的諸神），因而是人類無法企及的：「*...... in the tradition of nude Venuses..., this ideal bodies **presents a mythopoetic body that is linked to that of the gods.** This divine body, then, **this ideal body, is not attainable by a human.** .....These models individually can never embody the ideal since an ideal, by definition, can **never be fonund in this world. When ideal human bodies occur, they do so in mythology.***」(p. 4)
- 藝術作品中的隱喻：理想的身體是擷取「每個人的特長」，因而在這樣的「標準底下」，沒有人是「達標的」──但有趣的也是，社會並不要求人們「應該要達標」（因為這種肉體是純屬「藝術品」）。「*(In the painting by Francois-Andre Vincent) shows...... the Greek artist lining up all the beautiful women of Crotona in order to **select in each her ideal feature or body part and combine these into the ideal figure of Aphrodite.** ...... The central point here is that in a culture with an ideal form of the body, **all members of the population are below the ideal.** ...... There is in such societies no demand that populations have bodies that conform to the ideal.*」

- 與之相反的，怪異（grotesque）是理想身軀的副產品（在這個意義上，每個人的身體都是殘缺的[disabled]）。

> 看不懂：
>
> *......As Bakhtin, Stallybrass and White, and others have shown, the use of the grotesque had a life-affirming transgressive quality in its inversion of the political hierarchy.*

- 但怪異與障礙（disable）並不相同（對待也不同）。怪異是「common humanity」，但障礙並不是：「 *...... The grotesque permeated culture and signified common humanity, whereas the disabled body, a later concept, was formulated as by definition excluded from culture, society the norm.* 」

- 統計：從國家（的政策）過渡到身體（的政治）。

- *norm* 與 *average* 都是「統計學」的術語。以此來界定什麼叫做「disability」。
- 統計學最早是作為國家政策之用：「 *...... Statistisc begins in the earlty modern period as "political arithmetic" ─ a use of data for **"promotion of sound, welll-informed state policy"*** (Porter 1986, 18). 」
- 19世紀，統計學被用於研究健康與疾病之間的關聯性。「 *...... The concept migrated somewhat form the state to the body when Bisset Hawkins defined medical statistics in 1829 as "the application of numbers to illustrate the natural history of health and disease".* 」
- 而統計的應用，在英國又與工業的發展有關：「 *......The connection between the body and industry is tellingly revealed in the fact that the leading members of the first British statistical societies formed in the 1830s and 1849s were industrials or had close ties to industry.* 」

- Quetelet 的「l'homme moyen 」（平均人），他將統計的概念應用在社會學上（他稱之為社會物理學[soical physics]）：「 *......Quetelet maintained that this abstract human was the average of all human attributes in a given country. For the average man, Quetelet wrote ...... "all things will occur in conformity with the mean results obtained for a society. If one seeks to establish, in some way, the basis of a social physics, it is he whom one should consider."*」

- l'homme moyen（平均人）的意涵：「*is a combination of **<u>l'homme moyen physique and l'homme moyen morale</u>** , both a physicaly average and a morally average construct.* 」

- 平均人與中產階級（bourgeois）：

- 中產階級的生活是平均人的「模範」：「 *......the middle station hadf the fewest disasters, and was not exposed so many vicissitudes as the highrer or lower part of mankind...... (those who living in ) luxury and extravagancies on one hand, or (living in) hard labour, wnat oof necessaries and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand.......(so) the middle station of life was **calculated for all kinds of virtues and all kinds of enjoyments**; that peace and plenty were **the hand-maids of a middle fortune**; that **temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions amd all desirable p[leasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life.*** 」(p. 5)

> vicissitudes (n.): changes that happen at different times during the life or development of someone or someone or something, expecially those that result in conditions being worse.
>
> Distemper
>
> Uneasiness

- 市民社會（或者說文明社會）的目的就是「減少變異性」，讓越來越多人「一樣」：「 *one of the principal acts of civilization is to **compress more and more the limits within which the different elemnetys relative to man oscillate.** The more that enlightment is propagated, the more will deviations form the mean diminish.......*」 (p.5)

- Marx筆下的「工人」同樣隱含了平均人的概念，亦即個別勞動者的差異將在一定程度的量上得到弭平（即便他們個別的生產都有所差別）。

- 「*......his notion of labor value or average wages -- in many ways is based on the idea of the worker constructed as **an average worker***.」
- 「*Any average magnitude, however, is merely the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one kind, but differing as to quantity. In every industry, each individual labourer differs from the average labourer. These individual differences, or **“errors” as they are called in mathematics**, **compensate one another and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen are employed together**.*」

- 正常（norm）的暴政：藉由數學的語言，正常有了明確的圖像，而偏離（deviants）則得到明確的界定──亦即在常態分布（鐘型曲線）上的兩端──偏離了大多數人的狀態，因而是偏差的。社會對於正常與偏離的隱喻和概念，同樣應用在對於「身體」的討論上，因而障礙也就被等同於（常態分布中的）偏離。

- 「*.....The norm pins down that majority of the population that falls under the arch of the standard bell-shaped curve...... Any bell curve will always have at **its extremities those characteristics that deviate from the norm**. So, with the concept of the norm comes **the concept of deviations or extremes.** When we think of bodies, in a society where the concept of the norm is operative, **then people with disabilities will be thought of as deviants**.*」

## 歧視的「科學史」

- 顱相學
- 優生學
- IQ（智力等級）
-

## 歧視的「再現」

- Flaubert的《包法利夫人》
- 小說中的對身體的規範：國家與資本主義的力量／要求
- *.....In Flaubert’s "Madame Bovary" , Charles Bovary ..... performs a trendy operation that would correct the club foot of Hippolyte, the stableboy of the local inn. This **corrective operation is seen as “new” and related to “progress”**. Hippolyte is assailed with reasons why he should alter his foot. He is told, it “**must considerably interfere with the proper performance of your work**” (ibid., 126). And in addition to redefining him in terms of his ability to carry out work, Homais adds: “**think what would have happened if you had been called into the army, and had to fight under our national banner!**” (ibid., 126). So national interests and again productivity are emphasized. But Hippolyte has been doing fine in his job as stableboy; his disability has not interfered with his performance in the community under traditional standards.*(p.10)
- 小說中對「不良身體」的歧視──物化為動物：
- *......But although Hippolyte is more than capable, the operation must be performed **to bring him back to the human and away from the equine**......*
- 小說中的「基因決定論」：
- *Even on the level of plot, one can see the implication of eugenic notions of normativity. The parentage of characters in novels plays a crucial role. Rather than being self-creating beings, c**haracters in novels have deep biological debts to their forebears**, even if the characters are orphans—or perhaps especially if they are orphans.* (p.12)
- Zola的作品《盧貢─馬卡爾家族》、《The Experimental Novel and Other Essays》：
- 來自「家族的遺傳」如何影響（或者說，限制）個人
- 小說是「寫實的、科學的、經驗的」，並不是「臆想」。
- Joseph Conrad的小說
- 描述障礙者的詞彙、更多像是指責、辱罵的用語，透露出作者所在的文化中，對於障礙者的歧視。
- 在作品〈Under Western Eyes〉中，Conrad寫到，他認為他作品中的角色並不是「怪人」，這些描述的怪人更像是一種「展演」，展現出那個時代的普遍產物──而不是展現出「特例」。
- *......The mention of exhibition of monsters immediately alerts us to **the issue of nineteenth-century freak shows** and raises the point that by depicting “abnormal” people, the author might see **his own work as a kind of display of freaks**. Finally, Conrad makes the point that all these "abnormal" characters "are not the product of the exceptional **but the general─of the normality of their place, and time , and race.**"*

### 看不懂

*From the typicality of the central character, to the normalizing devices of plot to bring deviant characters back into the norms of society, to the normalizing coda of endings, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel promulgates and disburses notions of normalcy and by extension makes of physical differences ideological differences.* (p.15)