Normativity is defined against bodily signs of difference.

Evidence

Muslim monsters take on numerous characteristics, some of which are disguised. Foucault’s method of genealogical critique seeks to “disrupt fixed and essentialized accounts of the human subject,” revealing what is hidden. Genealogy not only seeks to reveal what is hidden, it shows how ideas of normativity are often situated in notions of alterity. Muslim monsters are examples of these signs of difference. Foucault’s work examines how difference is encoded in institutions like the mental asylum and heterosexuality, both of which discipline the body through a system of knowledge that requires a bifurcation of normal/strange. Muslim monsters do this work as well, often through afflictions like gigantism, hypertrichosis, black or purple skin, and canine teeth. Like mental illness and non-normative sexuality, corruptions of the body are signs of abnormal humanity. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 64

Categorization

• QUESTION: The afflictions named (gigantism, hypertrichosis, dark skin, canine teeth) are where the later detailed figure chapters should supply evidence; worth cross-checking against the monster/demon/giant typology I am tracking.
• XREF: Aligns with the parallel library work on how societies discipline non-normative bodies, echoing the Frankfurt School’s normal/strange bifurcation discussions.