Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

Davis, Lennard J.

Paperback

General Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral SociologySocial Movements

Publisher Price: $24.95

ISBN10: 1836740298
ISBN13: 9781836740292
Publisher: Verso
Published: Nov 18 2025
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.30
Language: English
In this highly original study of the cultural assumptions governing our conception of people with disabilities, Lennard J. Davis argues forcefully against ableist discourse and for a complete recasting of the category of disability itself.

Enforcing Normalcy surveys the emergence of a cluster of concepts around the term normal as these matured in western Europe and the United States over the past 250 years. Linking such notions to the concurrent emergence of discourses about the nation, Davis shows how the modern nation-state constructed its identity on the backs not only of colonized subjects, but of its physically disabled minority. In a fascinating chapter on contemporary cultural theory, Davis explores the pitfalls of privileging the figure of sight in conceptualizing the nature of textuality. And in a treatment of nudes and fragmented bodies in Western art, he shows how the ideal of physical wholeness is both demanded and denied in the classical aesthetics of representation.

Enforcing Normalcy redraws the boundaries of political and cultural discourse. By insisting that disability be added to the familiar triad of race, class and gender, the book challenges progressives to expand the limits of their thinking about human oppression.

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General Sociology

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