208 RüdigerKunow
an important aspect of normative constructions: their inherently
communicativenature(highlightedbyHabermas).
Another main point of the present argument has been to present
proof for my claim, made above, that the networks of normativity are
particularly dense and forceful when and where the biology of human
life is involved. Even while it has become almost an article of faith
among cultural critics to take for granted "an increasing stress on
personal reconstruction through acting on the body.. ." (N. Rose,
PoliticsofLife25-26),biologicalembodimenthasfromveryearlyonin
history been a central factor in people's self-understanding and self-
fashioning. Norms have guided these processes and provided important
resources for valuations and differentiations among human life that
determine nothing less than the humanness of human beings. What
counts as a life worth living, a body worth having, is inextricably
involved in the dialectics of what Canguilhem identified as the normal
and the abnormal and the pathological. In this way, human bodies are
oftentimes "burdened with perhaps more symbolic weight than they
should bear" (Barbas 1123). If then "normalization has evolved as a
distinctlycorporealphenomenon,"ithasalsobecomeone"inwhichthe
internalization of normalizing judgment can be experienced as inner
depth" (Heyes 31), as the two chapters on later life and disability will
show.
In these contexts as in many others, discussing biological norms
bring into play once more the ancient philosophical quandary of the
relations between inner essence and outward appearance. This
dichotomy is all the more poignant when normative requirements are
involvedbecause,aswehaveseen,theyarebasedonvisiblephenomena
while what is "really" involved is the customary, expected or desired
status of human life. What can be seen of a given person (his or her
body) makes him or her "normal" or not. Even given this insistence on
visibility,thesocialand culturalmeaning of agiven body is—asIhope
to show throughout this chapter—never exhausted by its surface
compliance with norms. But it is this very surface image, a
materializationbyproxyasitwere,whichorganizesallthosenarratives
instead"formsofsubmission,"asthenormsdiscussedinthepresentcontextalso
do.