174 RüdigerKunow
over 75 (Achenbaum,OlderAmericans18). Both the aged cohorts and
U.S.cultureingeneralhavecometoregardsuchactivitiesinoldageas
"normal," even to expect them from those who newly enter into this
stage of the life course. There is of course nothing in the various
conceptualizations of "normal aging" which provides a basis for this
new normal about late life; all this is a matter of social and especially
cultural processes of negotiation and communication which determine
what will appear as "normal" in later life. As this example also shows,
norms affect even those who are not interpellated by them. Their
colonizing effects, noted by Canguilhem, manifest themselves in the
way in whichthese new assumptionsaboutwhatis "normalaging"also
guidethebehaviorofthosewhoaremuchyounger.AgeStudiesscholar
MargaretGullette,amongothers,hasdocumentedaculturaltrendwhich
moves"ageanxiety"intomidlifeandevenearlieryears(Agewise99).
These brief reflections on two areas of biological normativity offer
illustrations of the contingent but also polemical aspects which are of
part of Canguilhem's theorizing of biology-based normativities. In the
examplesofferedhere,humanbodiesarenotjustinterpellatedbynorms;
they become types or cases in whichnormscomealive, are embodied,
lived, perhaps even (in the case of the "best agers" who are simply not
allowed to age) lived through. In the context of a materialist cultural
critique, the dynamics of normalization analyzed through a
Canguilhemian lens furthermore makes it plausible to read norms as
cultural crossroads where societal agendas and individual bodily life
converge. Given the polemical edge of normativities and the dialectical
relationssustainingthem,itofferslittlesurprisethatmoreoftenthannot
thesubjectnegativelydeterminedbyagivennormnonethelessoccupies
a strategic position within the system of the agendas in question. The
example above of defining more and more Americans as "at risk"
biologicallyillustratesthismechanismanditsmaterialeffects.
This latter idea clearly has a Foucauldian overtone, and indeed,
Canguilhem'sworkinthehistoryofthesciencesofthehumanprovided
a model for much of what Foucault attempted to do in his own
genealogical analyses of the emergence of the power/knowledge nexus
and its determining effects on human beings. Canguilhem, who had
directed Foucault's doctoral thesis on the history of madness, continued
to be a formative influence for him and his reflections on norms and