NotNormativelyHuman 165
intheprogressivelyeffective,cognitivemasteryofhumanexistenceand
the organization of human interaction (Vandershraaf, Bicchieri).
Anthropologists have described how norms operate across different
cultures (Geertz), and legal scholars how norms define negative socio-
cultural externalities and provide sanctions for undesirable behavior
(Ellikson). Sociologists such as Ferdinand Tönnies and in particular
Talcott Parsons have built their social-functionalist accounts of modern
societies around norms, their managing or legislating role as central
constituent factors of modern life (Durkheim; Hechter and Opp;
Luhmann,DieWirtschaftderGesellschaft; Parsons,TheSocialSystem;
Parsons and Shils). Parsons's highly influential line of reasoning
especially warrants a closer look. As he demonstrated, the socially
integrative function of norms is dependent on "the normative cultural
standards which integrate the action system [of the social manifold]
interpersonally" (Social System 36-40).^12 The word "cultural" is
important here because it suggests that, aside from and in addition to
their social functions, norms are always alsoculturalmeans. I would
add here that not only are they culturalmeans; norms also work to
achieve cultural ends, and as I will show, this role is especially
pronouncedwhenthebiologicaldimensionofhumanlifeisinvolved.
In the Humanities, for a long time, and especially since the days of
the Great Moderns, norms have often been regarded as something that
cultures leave behind. And so, following the principle ofépater le
bourgeois(Baudelaire, Rimbaud), shocking forms of aesthetic, or more
narrowly linguistic and narrative experimentation (Pound, Eliot, Joyce)
havebecomethecornerstonesofwhatartcriticHaroldRosenberginhis
famousbookbythattitlecalled"theTraditionoftheNew."^13 Withonly
(^12) For Tönnies and his closely related argument cf. hisEinführung in die
Soziologie.Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1931. Print. (no English
translation available). For a recent re-appraisal cf. Hechter, Michael, and Karl-
DieterOpp.SocialNorms.NewYork:RusselSageFoundation,2001.Print.
(^13) For a recent re-appraisal of this by now also conventionalized position cf.
Jameson, Fredric.The Ancients and the Postmoderns: On the Historicity of
Forms.NewYork:Verso,2015.Print.,andinGermanAmericanStudiescontext
the essays assembled in Freitag, Kornelia, and Katharina Vester, eds.Another
Language: Poetic Experiments in Britain and North America. Münster: LIT
Verlag,2008.Print.