182 RüdigerKunow
fashioning subject who shapes his or her identity in negation with and
resistance against social and cultural imperatives seems utterly alien to
Foucault'sthinking,onceagainexceptforgaylifeforms.
For a project that seeks to move beyond these constraints of the
Foucauldianmodel,itisessentialtoretaintheideaofthebiologyofthe
human body assubject/object of normalizing interventionsbutto link it
more systematically than Foucault has done with a cultural-critical
commitment to an "understanding that discursive practices are
inextricably involved in the organization of relations of power"
(Grossberg 8)—by (re)presenting, reiterating and reconstructing norms.
As I said earlier, norms need to take form, and in the overwhelming
majority of cases this form is textual, even narrative. It may perhaps be
claiming too much to speak of an elective affinity between discourses
and norms, but it is both empirically (with regard to the historical
record) and theoretically plausible to argue thatnorms need discursive
conduitsto be publicly present while discourses are both occasioned by
and saturated with norms; they provide the "stuff" discourses are made
of. These theoretical concerns can, in my view, be most usefully
exploredbyadiscourseethicsperspective.Andthisisthepointwherea
discourse-ethical approach to normativities can help amplify our
understandingoftheculturalpresenceofnorms.
CommunicativeNormalization:Habermas
Habermas's model of discourse ethics assigns norms a distinct
position as instruments of social integration and reproduction, both
performed discursively. Such a theoretical move, which is observable
already in his early work and takes center stage inBetween Facts and
Norms(first published in German in 1992), testifies to the continued
influence, even beyond the discipline of sociology, of Parsons's theory
of normative integration. Accordingly, the Habermasian perspective
here is primarily functional; norms do things for a purpose that is
addressed to and located in the collectivity. Moreover, norms, for
Habermas, do not simply impose themselves (as in the Foucauldian
systematic discourse... it is generally no more than a multiform
instrumentation"(26).