Beyond McWhorter
Much of what Ladelle McWhorter writes in Natural bodies: Or, Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Deviants resonates with me and my beliefs. Her points, even some of the more incidental ones, are spot on in my opinion. Many of her observations, by virtue of her position as a discriminated-against minority, do not just apply to her personally, but can be extended to other groups and apply to general prejudice and inter-group relations; her description of the common belief in dualist ideas is accurate; and the topic of deviance vs. difference is thought provoking. She draws her conclusions, and these strongly coincide with psychological data about discrimination, identity formation, and society. The following is a response and a slight expansion on some of her ideas, in the manner in which these thoughts were formed within my head.
When researchers want to examine the effects of a certain environment upon the individual, the best way to do so is to examine or question that individual. This is applied to children and day care, African-Americans and society, women and the workplace, or the elderly and decreased funding of social security. Those effected are the best indicators of effects; you ask a mother what it is to give birth; we ask a blind person what it is to be blind in society; we ask a victim what it is to be raped. Likewise, we ask the victims of discrimination about discrimination. Those who “will always fall victim to those in a position to advance that horrifically complacent little claim: ‘If you can’t control yourself, we’ll have to do it for you’” (McWhorter, 1999, pg. 146) will always be the best source for what it is to be forced into a particular norm. This perception of responsibility, on the part of those in power, to force conformity reminds me of what has been known to be called “the white man’s burden.” This burden comprised of duties such as civilizing Native Americans and taking protective custody of Africans. If we look at non-white culture as deviations, whites as the trees and Natives as the beans, neither is more or less good or better benefited for survival by their aggregate qualities. That trees have bark and the white men had Christianity is no better than beans not having bark and Native Americans having their own theologies.
However, there developed the idea that these deviations did have a difference in quality. The “noble savage” and the African slaves were infantilized, treated as undeveloped children in need of guidance. The deviations were attributed to a lack of proper training and proper information. Essentially, they missed what any “normal” person would do and know if they weren’t raised in the wild. Whites, as the norm setters, have no conception of what it means to be deviant and forced to un-deviate.
McWhorter’s belief in the need to overcome the Cartesian concept of mind/body relies on the idea that the value derived from thinking in this way is outweighed by the detriments. Taking from one of her own arguments, it is clear to me that this attitude can only be actively supported when the mind and body are developmentally prepared for it. I can say this from personal experience, and that it took McWhorter many years to be able to conceive of bodies this way in comparison to how I am now able to actively consider it only supports the idea that, in this society, bodies/minds must be developmentally prepared for changing paradigms. I have numerous physical deformities, which in my youth caused me some anguish. Similar to Boethius, as well as McWhorter, I escaped by separating my mind from my body, by maintaining that I could transcend my defects and make them irrelevant. For much of my life, this was not even a conscious drive, and only now do I recognize that I pushed myself in this way. McWhorter’s statement, “the terms need to change,” referring to the state of believing in dualism in order to survive, has a necessary reliance on individuals, as well as our society, to be developmentally ready for this paradigm shift. The value, then, of the dualist way of thinking is its ease of use as a defense mechanism; the detriment is its prevention of development.
But just as the body has its own internal forces guiding it (thus, why it is not a machine), the individual psyche does as well. The difference though is that the developmental course of the mind is drastically more flexible, variable, and moldable than that of the body.
Interestingly enough, even though McWhorter is pushing Foucault’s conception of a unified body and mind, in order to functionally discuss the mind and the body it is actually necessary to separate them. To justify this, consider mind as a function of the nervous system, which is one system among many. If we separate the nervous system from the rest of the bodily systems, like the circulatory, renal, or digestive, then we have an incomplete body. But in order to understand how the body works entirely, we must consider each system independently. Each develops at its own rate, in its own fashion; the mind is no different. While we independently consider things like the mind, we must still hold in our minds that mind and body are not separate, independent entities, but two parts of a dynamic network.
McWhorter’s statement “Experience had carefully taught me: All that was good, free, and creative was mental… Naturalistic conceptions of selfhood operative in American public debate constantly reinforced that view” (McWhorter, 1999, 148) is extremely powerful and entirely true. An unfortunate line of thought opens up when we consider the common dualistic thought process and its causes. Are there any other sources besides Descartes? What could continue to support and proliferate these dualist ideals? It’s impossible to find every fuel source of dualism, but it occurs to me that the appeal of a soul, something inside which out-lives the body, is certainly an important drive. This is by virtue a dualist proposition, that there is a soul separate from the body which does not follow the rules of the body. It stands to reason then that the most popular organized religions in the United States are to some significant degree responsible, if not for the origin of dualist ideals, then for the wide appeal and subsequent spread of them.
If we come to consider restrictions on social deviation, we can see that a logically related idea was described by Rousseau, who wrote about the chains of society which prevent us from becoming our “authentic selves.” McWhorter’s ideas, it can be argued, are completely compatible with Rousseau’s work on the authentic self; in fact, they complement each other so well that a more complete philosophy develops when they are considered in tandem. Rousseau’s “Men are born free but are everywhere in chains” makes complete sense in the context of McWhorter’s experiences and her adaptations of Foucault’s philosophies. McWhorter is essentially saying that in order to develop the authentic self, we need to stop considering it in two distinct parts; that our authentic selves are our natural bodies in their natural developmental tracks, and society’s control over them is an assault on deviation rooted in the dualistically based conclusion that it is possible to overcome these deviations of body by asserting control with the mind.
We’ve been focusing on dualism in regards to society’s inputs upon the individual, but I believe a group-to-group analysis must also be touched upon. McWhorter writes “Dualism invites me to ignore both those facts:” that she is white and she is female (McWhorter, 1999, pg. 172-173). It is interesting that she brings up her awareness of being white; as a general rule, white people are unaware of their whiteness, and unaware of what it means to be white. It is the minorities, the deviants, who are aware of whiteness. Derald Wing Sue, in his book Overcoming Our Racism, writes: “Whiteness is transparent precisely because of its… institutionalized normative features in your (white) culture… As a person of color, I do not find Whiteness to be invisible because I do not fit the normative qualities that make it invisible” (Sue, 2003, pg. 120-121). The same point is applicable for heterosexual people, and McWhorter has the dubious benefit of being able to understand this as member of the deviant group. So, we must take what information we can from those who are affected by such a system and reflect on the justice of it. When we consider deviance, what degree of deviance is societally acceptable? Is this a valid norm? Who benefits from such standards?
How McWhorter applies the term “deviant” is highly progressive, in my opinion. Calling someone a deviant has commonly been considered an insult, and in a way she is “taking it back,” returning it to a more pure meaning, in that “deviant” is the descriptive word given to someone or something that deviates from a prescribed norm. The established norm, which in McWhorter’s case is heterosexuality, is established by the group in power and they do what is necessary to remain in this position. Other norms in the US include whiteness, western thinking processes, and some type of Christian faith. As a student at a predominantly Catholic university and a generally Christian-saturated atmosphere, I’m sometimes reminded of my own deviancy, in that I am atheistic (think “without,” not “denying”) and haven’t had a formal Christian education. This sense of being outside the norm does not bother me; I rarely think of it. However, the norm of heterosexuality is imprinted much deeper in our psyches as a norm, and the feelings of deviancy stand to have a negative impact on anyone not subscribing to that norm. Just as McWhorter’s boots reminded her of her status as a “redneck” (McWhorter, 1999, pg. 173), people of color, homosexuals, or the disabled are reminded of their membership in a deviant group and the stigmatizations of that membership. However, unlike how the boots can be taken off, sexuality and race can not be taken off at leisure. Those who can be imposed upon and controlled are constantly reminded that they are outside the normalized standards; those who set the norms can be and frequently are ignorant of this.
So we come back to the beans and the trees. Who is to say that trees are better than the beans? At this point, the trees have the power to do so, and they set the norm as treehood. From my social scientist point of view, it is not enough to just extend McWhorter’s ideas of moving past dualism into normalization to all facets of life. We must continue to move forward away from normalization itself, to realize that “Freedom is the expanse of possibility,” (McWhorter, 1999, pg. 172) and expand the norms to include the deviants.
Works Cited
McWhorter, L. (1999). Natural bodies. In Bodies and Pleasure: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization. Indiana University Press.
Sue, D. W. (2003). Overcoming our racism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
