... of Australia. It does to examine how critical theories of (anti)normativity, plasticity, and vibrancy make, or not, a space for the difference of Nonlife existents in liberal geontopower. It begins with Georges Canguilhem’s critique of the mid-twentieth-century definition within biomedical sciences and normal...

...Normativity and Nationhood ...

...Social Norms and Professionalism ...

... This chapter introduces the concept of “primitive normativity,” a narrative espoused by colonial settlers and officials. The discourse of primitive normativity posited that Kenyan Africans were too “primitive” to practice certain kinds of “deviant” sexuality, including rape, homosexuality...

...The Creation of Normativities as a Biopolitical Project ...

...Normative Images and Shifting Spaces ...

...Destabilizing the Normative<subtitle>The Heterogeneous Self</subtitle> This chapter unravels Piro’s 160 Kafis to show how a former Muslim prostitute, and then a novitiate in a marginally Sikh Gulabdasi establishment, fashioned a self by writing “autobiographical” verses. The transgression...

... Chapter 1 outlines the intellectual history that allowed the narrative of primitive normativity to develop. In particular, it shows how two fields, anthropology and sexology, both revised their notions of the “primitive” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This reevaluation set...