Article/Essay

Introduction: Conceptions of the “Normal” Body

Banerjee, Dwaipayan

Description

Article written by 2009 DPDF Cultures & Histories of the Human Sciences Fellow Dwaipayan Banerjee, featured in Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 78, No. 2:

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Notes

1. Canguilhem insisted that the normative process was an inherent tendency of the biological organism itself; science had only gained knowledge of life in its recent recognition of this organic creativity. Several scholars, including Foucault, have developed Canguilhem’s work by refusing his strict distinction between the norms of “society” and the norms of “organic life.” The papers that follow are similarly able to demonstrate “normativity” as a process of social and political framing that produce the grids within which we understand the “normal” body.

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