158 RüdigerKunow
applicationandwherenormative-formativeprocessescanbestudiedand
criticized with particular acuity. The vast field of bodily sizes and
shapes,rulesandrecommendationsforahealthybody,for"good"looks
and also for styles of bodily comportment are thetoujours déjà donné
(Althusser) of the American way of life, complemented by norms for
clinical testing and guidelines for the definition of health risks, medical
advertising, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), patients'
rights movements—all of them manifestations (poststructuralists would
say, representations) of the grammar of norms which structure and
interveneourlives,individuallyandcollectively.
Before entering into a detailed discussion of these movements,
however, I would like to point out a somewhat overlooked fact, namely
that despite their regulatory intent and "content," norms are at the same
time also highly flexible, mobile but also potentially volatile: As
constructs which "cover" a multitude of cases they adjust the
contingencies of everyday human existence to the abstract generality of
a rule. In this way, there is a Platonist bent in normativities: seemingly
integrative and encompassing, they are expressions of the human desire
toadjustor"fix"theinexhaustiblepluralityofphenomenabysubsuming
them under the abstract universality of a norm. Such a "fixing" is
especially intriguing when it intervenes in human life in its boundless
variety offormsand features.Tocapture theseis boththeambitionand
the limiting condition also of biological norms so that, in its state of
subsumptionto agivennorm,humanlifeorlifeformscanevenbesaid
tobeaquoteorcitation.^2
Forthisreason,normshavelongbeenamajortopicofinterestinthe
social sciences, and I will repeatedly refer to the discussion in that
disciplinarycontext,butaboveallIwantinthischaptertobringnorms,
and of course especially biological norms, into a dialogue with
AmericanCulturalStudies.AsIwillshow,normsare,likethebodiesto
whichtheyrefer,bothmaterialandimaginary:theyinterveneinpeople's
lives by telling them what to do or not to do and in this way anchor
features of the cultural in individual lives and experiences. At the same
(^2) ThemostwidelyacceptedinterpretationofthiscitationalityisofcourseJudith
Butler's. InBodiesThatMatter,Butler further refines her understanding of this
term by linking it with performativity as "the reiterative and citational practice
bywhichdiscourseproducestheeffectsthatitnames"(2,14).