The term 'normal' or 'normality is often used to express what is socially acceptable or represents social norms within a respective cultural or social context. However, while established social norms present themselves as timeless and self-evident, they also point to their contingent and fragile genesis, a state where the respective norms were not yet established and institutionalized. This dynamic state, as a precondition of established social norms, can be phenomenologically described as inter-subjective normality. Reflecting on the historical genealogy of social norms points toward the interactive and ongoing processes which both make and (un)make our prevailing senses of 'normality' today.
This workshop wants to investigate the role of social norms and intersubjective normality within medical and political contexts. We thereby aim for a broadly phenomenological approach that critically reflects on the situatedness of every intersubjective normality and its interrelation with power relations. In investigating medical and political contexts, we also expect to carve open important avenues of dialogue between phenomenological research and other relevant theoretical frameworks, such as those found in the medical humanities, political philosophy, disability studies, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, critical race studies, queer theory, and more.
Programme
09:30 – 10:00 Walk in
10:00 – 10:30 Maren Wehrle – Introduction
10:30 – 11:30 Gen Eickers – Scripts, Social Norms, and Interactive Injustice
11:45 – 12:45 Tris Hedges – Erotic intentionality and (ab)normal pleasures
13:45 – 14:45 Hanne Jacobs & Kiki van Hedel – Queering Neuronormative Sociality
15:00 – 16:00 Mala Dengkeng – Ill conceived; a phenomenological critique of ‘cultural sensitivity’ in medicine
16:00 – 17:00 Havi Carel – tba
