176 RüdigerKunow
with the term "power"—and power, as Foucault famously put it, "is
everywhere... comes from everywhere... is permanent, repetitious,
inert"(Hi storyofSexuality93).
In his earlier work (up to and including Discipline and Punish
[1975]), Foucault tended to address norms in the framework of his
analysis of discursive formations (orépistèmes, as he calls them inThe
Archaeology of Knowledge[1969]), including those that helped form
today's biomedical complex. In contexts where power addresses the
biology of human life, discursive formations perform important social
and cultural work by acting as limiting conditions for how many and
what kind of norms can be installed: the discursive archive will, as
Foucault suggests, define the boundaries of what may be thought and
saidinandaboutnormsinagivenrealmofthoughtorhistoricalperiod.
However, this does not stop new clusters of norms from establishing
themselves. To the contrary, such clusters have insinuated themselves
into the novel scientific and seemingly objective "truths" which emerge
in the context of European modernity.^22 Aside from the disseminative,
interventionist power of scientific discourses, Foucault's most salient
examples of what might be called the norm-power-complex can be
found within a field which has stood at the center of Foucauldian
analysis: "the carceral texture of society" (Di scipline and Punish 304),
the range of disciplining institutions which define modern society: the
military, schools, hospitals, etc. Such a society is based, according to
Foucault, on interlinking mechanisms of control of which normalizing
judgment is a central operating factor: "the judges of normality are
everywhere" so that "the carceral network... has been the greatest
support, in modern society, of the normalizing power" (Discipline and
Punish304).
In the course of the emergence and formation of a EuroAmerican
modernity, "normalization" has finally come to affect all sectors of
society;followingCanguilhemhere,Foucaultespeciallynamesnational
standards for medicine, education, and industrial production. One
(^22) Here,FoucaultoffershisownversionofwhatHorkheimer/Adornotermedthe
"Dialectic of Enlightenment": "The 'Enlightenment,' which discovered the
liberties, also invented the disciplines" (DisciplineandPunish222). – It should
alsobenotedbrieflyherethatinspiteofhispopularityinacademiccirclesthere,
theU.S.arenotregularlyreferencedthroughoutFoucault'swork.