NotNormativelyHuman 169
systemic,characterthatmakesitfeasibletospeakofnormsintheplural:
normativities.
Thus, in the past, discriminatory norms prohibiting women from
takingcertainjobswithgreatresponsibilities(asapilotorsurgeon)were
partandparcelofanormativeview ofwomen'sbiologyasincapableof
handlingstressfulsituations.Or,inourowntime,normsforworkspaces
operate on the basis that persons working there have a normatively
capablebodyintermsofheightandsightwhichenablesthemtoseethe
screen and work with the equipment. Or, in order to be an effective
crime fighter, a candidate has to pass entry exams which test his or her
athletic prowess—even though the norms involved here have no
predictive value concerning his later work as a detective. Moreover, as
Canguilhem's reference to the realm of the virtual reminds us, such a
correlationofnormsneednotinallcasesbemanifestorexplicitbutcan
justaswellalsobelongtotherealmoftheimaginary,asintheexample
of the detective, where the imaginary grammar of bio-based norms
produces material results: determining the career chances of the
detective.Asafootnoteonemightaddherethatthisexamplewouldalso
illustratetheAlthusserianconceptofamaterialismoftheimaginary.
Canguilhem'shistoricalaccountoftheevolvementofsciencesofthe
human hones in on a crucial paradox: the objects of these sciences,
natural phenomena, while busy producers of biological norms, are in
and by themselves without innate defining patterns or regularities.
Nature does not know the normal. For the same reason, norms are the
productofanactofdetermininganddetermination(inHegelianterms,a
Setzung) : "To set a norm (normer), to normalize, is to impose a
requirement on an existence.. ." (239). Setting norms is thus never
neutral and the cultural work such norms subsequently perform is not
exhausted by marking a statistical average. Rather, it produces the
exceptions of which I have spoken above. And so it is no surprise that
the normal and the pathological, while mutually constitutive, do not
attain equal epistemological and practical status, for example by
designating different forms or statuses of human life.^16 Canguilhem
(^16) In more detail than can be recuperated here, Canguilhem shows that the
pathological is neither a quantitative nor a qualitative modification of the
normal: "... until now pathology has retained so little of that character which