‘No Alarms and No Surprises’: On Normal Abnormalities and an Abnormal Normality

On the one hand, disruptive or alienating experiences are quite common, experienced at one time or another by everyone. While they might seem to be exceptional or specifically confined to the elderly, the ill, or the disabled, everyone experiences illness at some point, and many experience old age and disability. In this sense, these disruptive experiences are ‘normal’ phases of human life, which can thus be described as ‘normal abnormalities’, a term inspired by the reflections of Simone de Beauvoir and Gail Weiss on aging and disability.). On the other hand, neoliberal Capitalism, Consumerism, and Technological Enhancement ideologies view aging, illness, and disability as personal failures and threats to normality. This leads to a politics that structurally discriminates against, excludes, or stigmatizes those affected by these conditions. However, the represented ‘normality’ of these ideologies—expressed by the image of a strong, independent, active, fully functioning, young subject—is itself an ‘abnormal’ (i.e., pathological) ideal, since it does not account for the temporal, vulnerable, and relational nature of all embodiment. It puts marginalized or non-conforming bodies in precarious situations, and, in turn, numbs those who are (still) able to conform to the plight of those who are not. Instead of being responsive to, and in solidarity with, the vulnerable, they are tired and worn out by false ideals and capitalist promises, and find themselves begging for a quiet life with ‘no alarms, and no surprises, please’. How can we embrace the ambiguity of our existence and the normal abnormalities that come with it, instead of denying them? Is there such a thing as a shared normality that cannot be reduced either to dominant social health norms, or to a supposedly objective nature, or to mere individual experience? In this paper, I investigate how an abnormal normality (represented normality) impacts the lived experience (lived normality) of those living and suffering from normal abnormalities (i.e., their lived normality) in different ways in aging, sickness, and disability. In this context, I want to argue for the relevance of the making and unmaking of an intersubjectively shared normality. Normality, in this sense, is the aim of a collective praxis that is based upon a common bodily vulnerability but also respects the specific differences and alterity of every situated bodily experience (of illness, disability, or aging).