Normal Now. Mark G. E. Kelly

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– principally the school, the hospital, the prison, the factory and, most obviously, the insane asylum – are shot through with this psychological normalization of behaviour.

      I imagine the reader might well ask, in relation to these claims of mine about norms, whether things weren’t always like this: weren’t there always such models? To this, I would suggest that we imagine this to be the case precisely because we are today so dominated by norms that it no longer seems conceivable that things could ever have been otherwise, or ever could be again. Although it does not affect the specific claims I will go on to make in this book, the critical force of my argument does depend to an extent on norms being an invention and hence being something that might reasonably be expected to disappear.

      Norms in our society are different from the unspoken rules that also exist in other societies, in that norms are not rules in a strict sense at all, but ideals. What is different about our society is that we are expected not just to follow rules, but in addition to conform to innumerable images of how we should be.

      Normalization consists first of all in positing a model, an optimal model that is constructed in terms of a certain result, and the operation of … normalization consists in trying to get people, movements, and actions to conform to this model, the normal being precisely that which can conform to this norm, and the abnormal that which is incapable of conforming to the norm. In other words, it is not the normal and the abnormal that is fundamental and primary in … normalization, it is the norm. That is, there is an originally prescriptive character of the norm and the determination and the identification of the normal and the abnormal becomes possible in relation to this posited norm.13

      Incidentally, Christianity, I would argue, historically has been about laws rather than norms because, although it held Jesus up as an example to imitate, it also held that Jesus was God, and hence that, unlike Jesus, mortals are all sinners who could not actually achieve his perfection – at least not in this life. Even if Christ makes Christ-like behaviour possible through His influence, He remains an extrinsic principle in this process, always above and beyond. Thomas à Kempis’s medieval classic, De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), thus effectively contains a list of rules (alongside prayers and meditations) based on Christ’s behaviour. The logic of the norm is diametrically opposite because it makes perfection normal, a default state that we ought always already to have achieved. This is similar to the Christian logic of implying that everyone has sins they should feel guilty about, but, unlike Christianity, it offers no forgiveness or sacrificial route to salvation, only an insistence that we should be without sin, something considered impossible in traditional Christianity.14 In this way, I think the growth of the logic of the norm is closely tied to the decline of religion in Europe, though it also clearly relates to aspects of the Christian legacy and to the fact that Christianity has to some extent, at least in some expressions, come to conform to the logic of the norm. I will discuss this dynamic further in the next chapter.

      It is frequently difficult to be sure whether we are following all the rules, and even harder to be sure that no one will accuse us of breaking them, but it is possible, at least in principle, to avoid breaking any given rule. Generally, this can be accomplished negatively: while there are some laws that actively require me to perform some obligation, if I do nothing, I will, by and large, remain innocent before the law. By contrast, the norm is essentially positive, always prescribing that we should be something more than what we are (even if this implies the negative injunction that we stop doing or being anything that is not in line with this ideal).

      This is not to say that the norm requires any explicit reference to perfection. Indeed, norms need not be explicit in any respect. Norms may be invisible and unremarked upon. Nonetheless, a norm always operates as an injunction for people to conform perfectly to it, even though this is always ultimately impossible.

      One dimension of this impossibility is, typically, that norms are nebulous and phantasmic, such that we can never know to what extent we actually conform to them. But complete conformity is not even possible in those rare cases where norms are actually explicit and precisely quantified. Take, for example, the normal human body temperature of 37°C: if we actually coincide with this it is for a limited duration, and then only ever to the extent that the thermometer measuring us does not have the accuracy to measure our inevitable minute variation from this precise number.

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