Constructing Normalcy

Davis' article on the history and philosophy of normalcy really added a subtlety and profundity on how normalcy is usually viewed. One part of the article that we didn't really talk about in class related this "normalizing" of the population with the rise of industrialization, and how this caused people to be viewed as products and resources to be used for the good and progression of the nation-industry. I thought this was a very interesting thought. I can relate it to a philosophy class I took in which we read some of Martin Heidegger's thoughts on the use of nature and people as reserves. This objectifies humans--each unit is then viewed as working or defective. Relating this to how we view disability, the objectification of human exaggerates the already negative light people view the disabled under in that now it's either they work or don't work, with no gray area or room for exception. With the article Mary presented, I thought this tied together nicely. By normalizing the healthy, "able" population, we push this marginalized group of people into a corner, lowering them into a subgroup of humans and stamping them with the label of useless.