The Creation of the Notion of Normality and Its Historical Meanings

This article is part of a broader study that analyzed the discourses of school inclusion in official documents and how they enact strategies of governmentality on so-called normal subjects. Therefore, it was crucial to question the normality concept. This text presents how the notion of normality was historically produced and, together with it, the practices of in/exclusion focusing on the subjects considered normal. Our theoretical support is the studies of Michel Foucault, Lilia Lobo, and Georges Canguilhem, who questioned the notions of abnormality and norm. As a result, we built three historical meanings to the notion of normality related to the knowledge produced throughout a specific period: the transcendental ideal - evidenced in the Middle Ages and constituted by religious and/or divine knowledge, linked to the body and conduct of subjects; the scientific normality - founded by scientific knowledge, between the 16th and 18th centuries, which seems connected to the subjects' behaviors and, by the end of the 18th century, also to their intimacy; and the differential normalities- associated to science of State, to statistical knowledge, and a flexible norm, which operates in the security society. Two contemporary movements established this notion related to the same phenomenon: the naturalization of differences. The first refers to the creation and proliferation of differential normalities, and the second to the acceptance, tolerance, and respect for diversity

Epistemology · Normality · Sociology · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

• O corpo no Ocidente Medieval

  Open Access•Diogo Da Silva Roiz•Revista Estudos Feministas•2010

  Add to list