162 RüdigerKunow
socially and culturally. Being thus "born into absence" (Pease,
"Introduction" 30) and relegated to the shadows of everyday praxis^9
nearly always produces important material consequences for how such
humans view their own being in the world and how they are in turn
viewed in the public sphere, where the "cultural sanctions" (Heyes 11)
forthebeingnon-normativearevisitedonindividualsandcollectivities.
However, such sanctions may work in a given case; when it rains, it
pours, also in the case of norms. As lynchpins of a wide-ranging
differential distribution of life chances, norms administrate multiply-
constituteddegreesandformsofvulnerability,individualandcollective.
Ifsomeoneis,bycommonjudgment,bothtooshortortooheavy,sucha
person is likely to have more intensive experiences of marginalization
than someone who misses only one of the normsinvolved here. From a
cultural-critical point of view, then, non-normative human life can be
understood as constituting an "archive of the subjective experience of
inequality.. ." (Berlant,Anatomy8). Against this background it is
possible,evennecessary,toreadtheongoingtrendtowardanevermore
intense"normalizing"ofthebiological—individualandcollective—asa
lively index of the progressive colonization of human life by the
exigenciesofscientificmodernity.
This colonization seems particularly far advanced in the United
Statestoday.Beforegoingintodetailsbelow,itmaybehelpfultonotea
historicaldepthdimensionhere.InthehistoryofU.S.-Americanculture,
not norms, rather, exceptions have always claimed special attention, as
they should in a culture and society for which exceptionalism has long
been its foundational ideology (Pease, "Introduction" 8-12, 20-22). At
the same time, and especially in historical retrospect, it becomes clear
thatwhilesomeexceptionswereconsideredanAmericanpatrimony(the
various social and cultural differences from Europe or the international
role of the U.S. as "redeemer nation"), others came to be viewed as
particularly un-American: age, disability, being overweight, to name
(^9) EventhoughPeasedoesnotreferexplicitlytobio-basednorms,hisoverallline
of argument concerning the "elemental abandonments" of people beyond the
pale of normative Americanness also accommodates the concerns voiced here
("Introduction" 30); similar arguments have been offered by Elizabeth Povinelli
("economiesofabandonment")andHenryA.Giroux("disposability").Bothwill
bediscussedbelow,inthecoda.