FoucaultMichel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 1979). One of the central works of a famous French philosopher who questioned the timeless-ness of many taken-for-granted aspects of normality.
2.
GouldStephen J.. The Mismeasure of Man (W.W. Norton, 1996). A popular work of the late Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist that critiques the assumptions of normality that lie behind intelligence testing.
3.
WakefieldJerome C.. “The concept of mental disorder: On the boundary between biological facts and social values,”American Psychologist47: 373–88. A philosophical examination of what distinguishes normal from disordered emotions.
4.
WarnerMichael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Harvard University Press, 2000). A notable literary critic interrogates and critiques the various definitions surrounding “abnormal” and “normal” sexual activity.
