THE CREATION OF THE NOTION OF NORMALITY AND ITS HISTORICAL MEANINGS

Abstract

This article is part of a broader study that analyzed the discourses of school inclusion in
official documents and how they enact strategies of governmentality on the so-called normal subjects.
Therefore, it was key to question the concept of normality. This text aims to present how the notion of
normality was historically produced and, together with it, the practices of in/exclusion focusing on the
subjects considered normal. We take as theoretical support the studies conducted by Michel Foucault,
Lilia Lobo, and Georges Canguilhem, who questioned the notions of abnormality and norm. As a result,
we built three historical meanings to the notion of normality related to the knowledge produced
throughout a certain period: the transcendental normality– in the Middle Ages established by religious
and/or divine knowledge, connected to the subjects’ bodies and conducts; the scientific normality –
founded by scientific knowledge, between the 16th and 18th centuries, which seems linked to the
subjects’ behaviors and, by the end of the 18th century, also connected to their intimacy; and the
differential normalities- associated to a science of State, to statistical knowledge, and a flexible norm,
which operates in the security society. This notion is established through two contemporary movements
related to the same phenomenon: the naturalization of differences.