166 RüdigerKunow
a modicum of abstraction, it can be argued that the avant-gardist
agendas of High Modernism and the postmodern ones of playful
relativism both find their points of convergence and also their ultimate
legitimation in the de(con)struction of cultural normativities. In a
felicitous figure of speech, Paolo Virno has in the title of his book
identified these normativities as "the grammar of the multitude"
(Virno).^14 How this "grammar" unfolds into a body of rules and forms
andhowtheseaffectthebiologicaldimensionofhumanlifeinparticular
willbeshowninthesectionsthatfollow.
Norms both describe and prescribe. If we look at this double
mandate from the perspective of representation—the central
preoccupation of contemporary cultural critique—then it becomes clear
that norms' normative bent tends to undermine their broad
representational authority. Rather, it invests them with an imaginary, if
not at times outright fictional, quality. In the preferred parlance of
current poststructuralist critique, they are constructs, like so many
others.Iwouldprefertospeakhereoftheimaginarygrammarofnorms.
While it is a useful critical gesture to make norms lose their
unquestioned representational authority, to deconstruct and delegitimize
them,thereareotheraspectsequallyworthourcriticalattention.Among
theseistheideathatnormsareseeminglyexhaustiveandencompassing,
a notion which suggests itself almost immediately to our intuitive
understanding. What such a view neglects, however, is the fact—
important for cultural critique—that norms also possess powerful, even
stringently incisive selective propensities. In the case of
heteronormativity, for example, a wide range of sexualities, named by
the cipher LGBTQIA*, is treated as if it did not exist. Here as in many
other cases, norms are effective as well as affective producers of
exceptions,exclusions,omissions,irregularities.
Herethefolkwisdomthattherearenonormswithoutexceptionshas
its foundational moment of justification, but an analytic of the complex
interplay of norms and exceptions cannot stay on this level: instead, it
mustseektoaddressthedialecticsatworkintheimaginarygrammarof
(^14) It is interesting to note that grammar is being increasingly often invoked in
social and cultural analysis. An example is Axel Honneth's Struggle for
Recognition.