Disability, Normality, and Power

This reading clearly expressed the uses of language in its contribution to power and how society is led to percieve disability and people living with disabilities, utilizing normalcy along with its origins in eugenics, statistics, and industrialism. The generalizing term "normal" not only generalizes desirable traits but it especially emphasizes what are deemed undesirable traits. These traits are shown to be exremely grouped together, disability being within the breath as criminal and the poor, giving life to othering language equated to "relative inefficiency." How does the historical connection between normalcy, eugenics, and industrialism continue to shape societal perceptions of disability today, and in what ways does language contribute to reinforcing or challenging these perceptions?