NotNormativelyHuman 161
terrain in which the modern liberal subject has to operate. Their
structure and function is thus no longer (if it ever was) a matter for
scientists or biomedical experts alone but very much also a matter of
serious concern for cultural critique, especially a materialist cultural
critiqueliketheoneattemptedhere.
Such critique would need to move beyond the currently fashionable
textual activism (tracing objectionable normative representations, such
as gendered beauty norms) and instead engage the material conditions
produced and sustained by norms, for it is these material conditions
whichdetermine,evendelimit,thesocialandculturalagencyofpeople.
In order to make visible the often silent and inconspicuous force of this
clusterofbiologicalnormativities,Iwillinthepagesthatfollowpresent
evidence from U.S.-American culture past and present, from (auto-)
biographical, literary, journalistic sources and also from material
originating in the biomedical or life sciences. Together, these texts will
show where, when and how norms speak, how they produce a cultural
superstructurethatinterpellatespeopleatallagesandstagesoftheirlife
course into existing clusters of normativity. Furthermore, I will suggest
that these interpellations, while open in principle to a wide variety of
cultural forms, have a special affinity towardnarratives of appearance
anddisappearance.
Before addressing these narratives in detail, a further introductory
observationneedstobemadehere,onethataddressesthetemporalityof
normativities. In the collection of cultural norms to be discussed here,
many will time and again function as an idiom of the (social and)
culturalstatus quo. Norms tend to be conservative (in more than one
sense) and this characteristic affects, and at the same time manifests
itself in, the individual and more particularly his or her own
embodiment.Itislittlesurprisethereforethattheconservativecharacter
of norms has in times past and present been most acutely visited on
those who for whatever reason could not or would not comply with
biology-basednormativities.Suchindividuals,evenwholecollectivities,
areoftenidentifiedbytheterm"pathological,"adesignationwhich,asI
will show, does not simply signal non-conformity with a cluster of bio-
basednorms;rather"pathological"carrieswithitahostofpronouncedly
negativeconnotationswhichperformincisive,oftennefarioussocialand
cultural work. People whose biological non-normativity has come to be
viewedasaconstitutiveelementoftheiridentity areduly marginalized,