A review for Sociology written in July 1996 of

Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body, London, Verso, 1995, £12.95 (£34.95), xxi + 203 pp.

Deaf and Disability Studies have so far been at odds with one another; the Deaf community like to think of themselves as a linguist minority separate from disabled people, whilst the disabled community see the Deaf as 'one of our lot'. The Deaf are part of the disabled community and, of course, they are also a linguistic minority; but these are two separate issues. It is this apparent battle over Deaf people (the Deaf are those who are, primarily, congenitally deaf and use sign language) that is both Davis' strong point and downfall: he is unable to decide for himself whether or not the Deaf are disabled or are a linguistic minority. Davis' problem - as it is for so many American academics who take up disability theory - is that he has failed to flesh out the difference between impairment (a somatic difference) and disability (the social construction, and its results, of impairment); he does, instead, use them as if they are the very same thing (and this is despite his recognising in the text that they are not). Though, despite this, he does offer some very well argued points about disability by using Deafness as his way in but the advances in disability theory over the past few years have been immense, mainly in the UK by the likes of Michael Oliver, Colin Barnes and Len Barton, and once American theorists get to grips with it they will develop a clarity about disability theory that will make texts like this truly essential.

Such a lexicographic error, or lapse, in using disability or impairment as if they have the meaning often undermines all that is good about the book. And there is much that is excellent: as in chapter three when Davis details the emergence of Deafness as a social construct tied in with nationalism and internationalism and national identity in Europe in the Eighteenth Century. Davis also recognises, and he one of the few disability theory writers to recognise this, the intrinsic inter-connection between normality and abnormality: Davis argues that Normality constructs abnormality as Other and that this is tied in with the normalising hegemony of Eighteenth Century Bourgeois hegemony. Davis looks at a variety of literary texts to prove his point persuasively, notably Conrad and Dickens, but here again Davis has slightly missed the point - despite almost seeing it but then pulling back from it - namely that normality does not construct abnormality but that abnormality constructs and defines normality. A subtle, but key, difference that is, perhaps, partly explained by the fact that Davis is not himself disabled; normality is invisible and elusive, abnormality is everywhere in culture - another rare insight by Davis that is not intellectually carried through - and easily identified for and by society to give the illusion that normality is a reality (usually by the medical profession) when it is not.

The desire to see normality constructing abnormality also explains the most consistently contradictory thing about the book: its condemnation of psychoanalysis, as a 'eugenics of the mind - creating the concepts of normal sexuality' (p. 39), whilst then using it to generalise in an essentialist manner the normal's universal rejection of the abnormal. The criticism of Freud is justified (as Gay Studies has shown) as it is a normalising, and somewhat fascist, view of the human psyche. It is surprising then that Davis calls upon psychoanalysis fairly regularly in the text to generalise as universal the rejection of abnormality, which is not the case; as he himself acknowledges in the text.

Davis offers many insights in to disability theory that are both original and astute; his slips are relatively minor (apart from the constant misuse of disability and impairment) and excusable by his own admittance that 'disability' is a new area of investigation to him (he is out of the literary studies field). As such, I would argue that Enforcing Normalcy should be essential reading for any academic in the fields of sociology, disability studies, identity analysis and history and/or literature. Enforcing Normalcy would facilitate extra insights for any work being done in cultural and film studies as well and the text is, on the whole, a credit to David’ eclecticism and academic skills.

University of Warwick Paul Anthony Darke 712 words