NotNormativelyHuman 159
time, norms are hypothetical, spectral, even fictional projections,
anticipationsofhoworwhatindividualsorcollectivesoughttobe,what
a "normal" human being should do. In their janus-faced doubleness,
norms invite the disciplinary competence of the Humanities, because
they demarcate the principal arenas where the materiality of the body
impactsonits(possibilitiesof)signification,whereculturalassumptions
abouthumanlifeareformulated,debatedorenacted.
As was briefly suggested, human bodies and their biological make-
up have a long history of being measured, weighed, sized-up—in short,
normalized. As a result of these normalizations, biology-basedclusters
of normativity^3 have emerged whose density and effectivity is perhaps
unparalleled in other areas of individual and social praxis. Constantly
renewed and revised, they enact a dialectic of sense-datum and
abstraction, by incessantly and insistently converting the biological
endowment of human beings into quantifiable signs and schemata
(Rajan 55). A recent example is the interdisciplinary field of
biometrics,^4 organizedaroundtheformulationanddeploymentofnorms
based on algorithms and other mathematical (especially statistical)
models. They are now regularly and often unquestioningly put to work
infieldssuchasbiomedicine,publichealth,andpublicpolicy.
All of this is not as new as especially the current tidal wave of new
biological norms may suggest. In fact, some of the pivotal moments in
the history of medicine, Henry Gray'sAnatomy of the Human Body
(1860),WilliamHarvey'sworkonthecirculationofbloodinthebodyin
DeMotuCordis(1628), or Walter Reed's findings about the etiology of
yellow fever, are all predicated on basically the same principle: finding
the operative principles which determine the workings of a normal
human body or its pathological opposite. In other words, in the history
of modern medicine, "normalizing" the body is often regarded as the
sinequanonforhealingit.Andmostrecently,asthegeneticrevolution
(^3) Anoteonterminology:inordertodifferentiatetheregulatoryarsenalofnorms
from pre-critical reflections on ordinary, everyday conditions, I will throughout
thischapterspeakofnormativityratherthanofnormalornormality.
(^4) Biometrics,broadlyspeaking,referstotheimplementationofquantifiabledata
related to bodily features and characteristics. Cf. Cole, Simon A. "The Face of
Biometrics."TechnologyandCulture53.1(2012):200-03.Print.