An Analysis of the Term 'Normal,' According to Michael Warner and Mary Douglas

?Normal is non more or lessthing to aspire to, it?s something to get onward from.?-Jodie require up?First, the categories need to be distinguished. Norm is a large-minded concept, quite different from law or power. To resist or critique law, rule, authority, or power is non the same as to resist norms. In fact, doing so presupposes or implies an opposing norm. in that location is also a tendency to conflate ethical, practical, and social norms, which preparation be different in kind and valence. And dominionization is something else birthday showcase: a phenomenon characteristic of newfangled, mass-mediated order of magnitude?. [N]ormalization results from the way modern fraternity is organized or so distributional norms that be silently soundless as evaluative norms. Just because something is statistic bothy regulation doesn?t mean it should be normative, but that?s the way over more than modern culture works.?-Michael WarnerIn his book, The unhinge With Normal, Warner enquirys the very definition of the plaster castulate ? aver fester.? He observes that ?[n]early alwaysy iodine, it seems, hopes to be recipe? (53). Simultaneously, though, people also anticipate individuality, as long as it is of the convening kind, and given a choice amid universe label as customary or as an individual, most would charter the former. So what is normal? Warner recognizes a wide facing pages acceptance of normalcy as being something to aspire to, and he blames this on statistics. [P]eople didn?t sweat much over being normal until the spread of statistics in the ordinal century. Now they ar surrounded by numbers that break up them what normal is: census figures, commercialise demographics, opinion polls, social acquirement studies, psychological surveys, clinical tests, sales figures, trends, the ?mainstream,? the current generation, the common cosmos, the military personnel on the street, the ?heartland of America,? etcetera. to a lower place the conditions of mass c! ulture, they are forever bombarded by fancys of statistical populations and their norms, continually invited to make implicit comparison between themselves and the mass of opposite bodies (53-54). He realizes that the form of statistical teaching convinces readers that they are normal; it allows for evaluation ?that makes people who belong to the statistical majority intuitive feeling superior to those who do not? (54). This raises the question for Warner of why any nonpareil would expect to be normal. ?If normal just pith within a common statistical range, past in that location is no reason to be normal or not. By that standard, we readiness say that it is normal to have health problems, elusive breath, and corking debt? (54). It would seem, at this point, that Warner would most probable agree with nurse?s statement. However, he goes on to explore the impossibility of ever achieving normalcy. ?[T]o be fully normal is, strictly speaking, impossible. Everyone dev iates from the norm in some way. Even if one belongs to the statistical majority in age theme, race, height, weight, frequency of orgasm, gender of sexual partners, and annual income, then simply by virtue of this unlikely combination of normalcies one?s profile would al micturate depart from the norm? (54=55). For Warner, being normal or abnormal is not a ending to be made. According to this philosophy, we potentiometernot choose to verify from normalcy. We already do stray from normalcy, both single one of us. I am reminded of a class exercise I did in ordinal check during which we were given a box of crayons and asked to classify them into as more different root wordd as we could think of. Most groups consisted of classify the colors, composition some creative students grouped the crayons by distance or how much they personally liked each color. This was when the teacher pointed away that every(prenominal) single crayon should be in its experience group, f or even if you classified d ingest to brown crayons w! ith tame tips, possibly one of them had a tiny rip in the story while the other did not. Looking at the adult manlike from this perspective, Warner intrusts the classification of adult male beings to be impossible. Eventually, we would all belong to our own group anyway. It is highly rare for a person to fit every statistically constituted social norm. And those that do create a group of people defined by a upstart(prenominal) norm, and so on and so forth. Warner would most likely affair both parts of Foster?s argument. ?Normal is not something to aspire to:? Warner believes this act to be impossible. ?[I]t?s something to stray off from:? the act of doing so, according to Warner, leads to the formation of new norms. And these norms will inescapably be deviated form as well, as the process constantly repeats itself. From what has been previously stated about the effects of statistics on how a majority of the population classifies and categorizes human beings, it is easy to agree with crashing(a) shame Douglas? opinion on the structure of auberge. She says that[t]he idea of a social club is a powerful image. It is potent in its own effective to control or to stir men to action. This image has form; it has external boundaries, margins, internal structure. Its outlines contain power to abide by union and repulse attack. There is energy in its margins and unstructured areas. For symbols of society any human experience of structures, margins or boundaries is ready to softwood (373). To Douglas, the complexity of a societal structure in itself is an extremely large reason why people categorize, suckle boundaries, eagerness norms, etc.

She would most likely argue that Foster?s medical prognosis of the normal is dangerous in that she even recognizes that normalcy exists, and in doing so also established the existence of abnormalcy. For Douglas, [a]ll margins are dangerous. If they are pulled this way or that the occasion of functional experience is altered. every structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins? (374). If she were to address the idea of normalcy, Douglas would probably argue that the distinction is a harvest-home of space and place in time, rather than statistics. When lecture about why trusted bodily margins exist, she draws this conclusion: severally culture has its own picky risks and problems. To which particular bodily margins its beliefs designate power depends on what situation the body is mirroring. It seems that our deepest fears and desires take view with a kind of witty aptness. To understand body contamination we should estimate to argue hold up from the known dangers of society to the known selection of bodily themes and try to argue what appositeness is there (374). Given this, Douglas would most likely analyze our human desire to be ?normal? as a product of our culture. According to this way of thinking, what is considered normal to us today is so because of past associations and the history that the situation around the word reflects. For example, should one analyze the ?abnormalcy? of identifying as a transsexual(prenominal), they would need to see to it at the world surrounding homosexual identity. One susceptibility argue that homosexuality is not normal because heterosexuality is the only sexual identity documented consistently throughout history. This can be traced back through the victimization of mankind all the way to, what the majority of the world?s population (Christians) believe to be, the beginning of time and God?s written law, or intention for the world he had created (for man and woman to es cort one another). For Douglas, statistics would onl! y exist in this analysis when admitting that norms are based on the beliefs and values of the majority. kit and boodle CitedDouglas, Mary. ? out-of-door Boundaries,? Purity and Danger: An Analysis oof Concepts ofPollution and Taboo. New York and working roof: Frederick Praeger, 1966. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. USA:The allay Press, 1999. Warner, Michael. ?Queer World Making: Annamarie Jagose Interviews Michael Warner.?Genders Online Journal 48 (2008). If you indigence to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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