The Nature of the "Ruling Body": Embodiment, Ableism and Normalcy

In this article I try to show that the assumptions we rely upon when constructing notions of human nature strongly affect the concrete human individuals by building up the correct, adequate, human body as the norm to which anyone of us must conform in order to be declared fully human. In short, the construction of the “ruling body” moving from a particular definition of human nature is the topic of this article, as well as its implications for those human bodies that are not able, or willing, to conform. I have chosen to show the basically totalitarian character of the present (and still mainstream) notion of the “human nature” by means of referring to the case of the so-called “disabled bodies”. My aim is to advocate a different notion of nature, according to which there is no possibility to build stable categories of the human body and the human being (in the singular), due just to the fact that every possible notion of nature is unavoidably constructed by (some) human beings for the sake of themselves, therefore always implying the exercise of power.