ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the dark abyss of designing the legitimacy of the atypical body for membership, quasi-membership, or exclusion from the category of human. The policies in the chapter are not simply about atypical bodies and disability design, but rather about views of humanness and the non-examples mirrored by such bodies. Through discussion and reading, more fundamental questions about the meaning of human in human rights policies began to make their way to the physical and virtual shelves of our library. The Developmental Disabilities Act (DDA) in the United States contains further rhetoric on the role of developmentally or age-normed policy in undesigning humanness. In a recent presentation given by graduates of an early intervention master's degree program, well-intended students reflected the DDA policy mandates, essentially capturing and institutionalizing the violation of children in a service system in perpetuity.
