anguilhem continuing from precisely where the last left off:

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In anthropological experience a norm cannot be original. Rule begins to be rule only in making rules and this function of correction arises from infraction itself. A golden age, a paradise, are the mythical representations of an existence which intially meets its demands, of a mode of life whose regularity owes nothing to the establishment of rules, of a state of guiltlessness in the absence of the interdict that ignorance of the law is no excuse. These two myths proceed from an illusion of retroactivity according to which original good is later evil kept in control. The absence of rules goes hand in hand with the absence of technical skills. Golden age man, and paradisiacal man, spontaneously enjoy the fruits of a nature which is uncultivated, unprompted, unforced, unreclaimed. Neither work nor culture, such is the desire of complete regression. This formulation in negative terms of an experience consonant with the norm without the norm having had to show itself in and by its function, this really naive dream of regularity in the absence of rule, signifies essentially that the concept of normal is itself normative, it serves as a norm even for the universe of mythical discourse which tells the story of its absence. This explains why, in many mythologies, the advent of the golden age marks the end of a chaos. As Gaston Bachelard said: “Multiplicity is agitation. In literature there is not one immobile chaos” [op. cit., p. 59]. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses the earth of chaos does not bear fruit, the sea of chaos is not navigable, forms do not remain identical to themselves. The initial indetermination is later denied determination. The instability of things has as its correlative the impotence of man. The image of chaos is that of a denied regularity, as that of the golden age is that of wild [sauvage] regularity. Chaos and golden age are the mythical terms of the fundamental normative relation, terms so related that neither of the two can keep from turning into the [PAGE 242] other. The role of chaos is to summon up, to provoke its interuption and to become an order. Inversely, the order of the golden age cannot last because wild regularity is mediocrity; the satisfactions there are modest - aurea mediocritas - because they are not a victory gained over the obstacle of measure. Where a rule is obeyed wothout awareness of a possible transcendence, all enjoyment is simple. But can one simply enjoy the value of rule itself? In order to truly enjoy the value of the rule, the value of regulation, the value of valization, the rule must be subjected to the test of dispute. It is not just the exception which proves the rule as rule, it is the infraction which provides it with the occaision to be rule by making rules. In this sense the infraction is not the origin of the rule but the origin of regulation. It is in the nature of the normative that its begining lies in its infraction. To use a Kantian expression, we would propose that the condition of the possibility of rules is but one with the condition of the possibility of the experience of rules. In a situation of irregularity, the experience of rules puts the regulatory function of rules to the test.

What eighteenth-century philosophers called the state of nature is the supposedly rational equivalent of the golden age. We must recognize with Levi-Strauss that Rousseau, unlike Diderot, never thought that the state of nature was a historical origin for humanity brought to the ethnographer’s attention by the geographer’s exploration. For his part Jean Starobinski has shown successfully that the state of nature described by Rousseau is the portrayal of spontaneous equilibrium between the world and the values of desire, a state of prehistoric haphazardness in the absolute sense of the terms, since it is from its irremediable disintegration that history flows as from a source. Strictly speaking, then, there is no grammatical tense adequate for a discussion of a human experience which has been normalized without representation, in [PAGE 243] the consciousness, of norms linked to the temptation to oppose their exercise. For, either the adequation of fact and law is unperceived and the state of nature is a state of unawareness of which no event can explain that from it stems the occasion of a grasp of consciousness; or, the adequation is perceived and the state of nature is a state of innocence. But this state cannot exist for itself and be a state at the same time, that is, a static disposition. No one innocently knows that he is innocent since being aware of adequation to the rule means being aware of the reasons for the rule which amounts to the need for the rule. It is appropriate to contrast to the overly exploited Socratic maxim that no knowing man is evil, the opposite maxim that no one is good who is aware of being so. Similarly no one is healthy who knows that he is so. Kant’s words: “Well-being is not felt for it is the simple consciousness of living” are echoed by Leriche’s definition: “Health is life in the silence of the organs.” But it is in the rage of guilt as in the clamor of suffering that innocence and health arise as the terms of a regression as impossible as it is sought after.

The abnormal, as ab-normal, comes after the definition of the normal, it is its logical negation. However, it is the historical anteriority of the future abnormal which gives rise to a normative intention. The normal is the effect obtained by the execution of the normative project, it is the norm exhibited in the fact. In the relationship of the fact there is then a relationship of exclusion between the normal and the abnormal. But this negation is subordinated to the operation of negation, to the correction summoned up by the abnormality. Consequently it is not paradoxical to say that the abnormal, while logically second, is existentially first.

…

Canguilhem, G. (1998). The Normal and the Pathological (C. R. Fawcett, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.

I’m not sure if I will transcribe the whole chapter, although it would be nice to get beyond the existential priority of the abnormal and onto class, organisation and eventually sociologie .