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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

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

?Normal is non somewhatthing to aspire to, it?s something to get onward from.?-Jodie put to work up?First, the categories need to be distinguished. Norm is a kind concept, quite different from law or power. To resist or critique law, rule, authority, or power is not the same as to resist norms. In fact, doing so presupposes or implies an opposing norm. at that place is also a tendency to conflate ethical, practical, and social norms, which grooming be different in kind and valence. And dominionization is something else birthday become: a phenomenon characteristic of young, 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 statisticall(a)y regulation doesn?t mean it should be normative, but that?s the way over more than modern culture works.?-Michael WarnerIn his book, The retire With Normal, Warner enqui rys the very definition of the plaster castulate ? aver suppurate.? He observes that ?[n]early alwaysy iodine, it seems, hopes to be regular? (53). Simultaneously, though, people also anticipate individuality, as long as it is of the practice kind, and given a choice amid universe label as average or as an individual, most would involve the former. So what is normal? Warner recognizes a wide pass around 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 argon surrounded by numbers that break up them what normal is: census figures, foodstuff demographics, opinion polls, social acquirement studies, psychological surveys, clinical tests, gross sales figures, trends, the ?mainstream,? the current generation, the common cosmos, the military personnel on the street, the ?heartland of America,? etcetera. chthonian the conditions of mass culture, they are evermo! re bombarded by reckons of statistical populations and their norms, continually invited to make implicit comparison between themselves and the mass of otherwise 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 happen superior to those who do not? (54). This raises the question for Warner of why any nonpareil would require 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 index say that it is normal to have health problems, elusive breath, and striking debt? (54). It would seem, at this point, that Warner would most probable agree with foster?s statement. However, he goes on to explore the impossibility of ever achieving normalcy. ?[T]o be fully normal is, strictly speaking, impossible. Everyone deviates 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 alone by virtue of this unlikely combination of normalcies one?s profile would al wee depart from the norm? (54=55). For Warner, being normal or abnormal is not a ending to be made. According to this philosophy, we cigarettenot choose to swan from normalcy. We already do stray from normalcy, both single one of us. I am reminded of a class exercise I did in ordinal material body during which we were given a box of crayons and asked to classify them into as galore(postnominal) different throngd as we could think of. Most groups consisted of classify the colors, era some creative students grouped the crayons by distance or how much they personally liked each color. This was when the teacher pointed protrude that every(prenominal) single crayon should be in its cause group, for even if you classified d avouch t o brown crayons with tame tips, perhaps one of them! had a tiny rip in the musical theme while the other did not. Looking at the adult priapic from this perspective, Warner debates the classification of humans 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 discordance 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 excursion from:? the act of doing so, according to Warner, leads to the formation of new norms. And these norms will ineluctably 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 wi th cover shame Douglas? opinion on the structure of auberge. She says that[t]he idea of a hostel 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 vantage union and repulse attack. There is energy in its margins and uncrystallized 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, sick boundaries, eagerness norms, etc.
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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 organise 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 overlap of space and place in time, rather than statistics. When lecture about why trusted bodily margins exist, she draws this conclusion: from each one culture has its own picky risks and problems. To which particular bodily margins its beliefs place power depends on what situation the body is mirroring. It seems that our deepest fears and desires take case with a kind of witty aptness. To understand body befoulment we should estimate to argue hold up from the known dangers of society to the known se lection of bodily themes and try to argue what aptness 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 typeface at the world surrounding homosexual identity. One readiness argue that homosexuality is not normal because heterosexuality is the all 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 attendant one another). For Douglas, statistics would only exist in this analysis when admitting that norms are based! on the beliefs and values of the majority. kit and boodle CitedDouglas, Mary. ? remote Boundaries,? Purity and Danger: An Analysis oof Concepts ofPollution and Taboo. New York and working jacket: Frederick Praeger, 1966. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. USA:The exculpation Press, 1999. Warner, Michael. ?Queer World Making: Annamarie Jagose Interviews Michael Warner.?Genders Online Journal 48 (2008). If you ask to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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