What makes some actions and ways of moving appear ‘normal’ to us while others ‘strange’? According to Sara Ahmed, at the heart of the matter is repetition. When repeated regularly by enough people, that way of being gradually becomes the ‘norm’. We say then – that is just how things are. It is a given.
In her 2006 book, Queer Phenomenology, Ahmed challenges this way of thinking and draws our attention to it. Indeed, how many things do we keep doing the same way just because that is how they have ‘always’ been done?
“[T]he normative can be considered an effect of the repetition of bodily actions over time, which produces what we can call the bodily horizon, a space for action, which puts some objects and not others in reach. The normative dimension can be redescribed in terms of the straight body, a body that appears ‘‘in line.’’ Things seem ‘‘straight’’ (on the vertical axis), when they are ‘‘in line,’’ which means when they are aligned with other lines. Rather than presuming the vertical line is simply given, we would see the vertical line as an effect of this process of alignment… The vertical is hence normative; it is shaped by the repetition of bodily and social actions over time. The body that is ‘‘in line’’ is one that can extend into space, at the same time that such spaces are effects of retracing those lines, which is another way of describing ‘‘extension.’’”
Sara Ahmed*
keep exploring!
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*Sara Ahmed “Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others” (2006)
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