NotNormativelyHuman 183
model); they enter the circuits of communication in modern society
wheretheydefinethenormativecommitments(values,morality,justice)
ofagivenformation.Forthisreason,normativeclaimsarelocatedatthe
interface between "communicative power" and "administrative power"
(FactsandNorms134,150),whichmeanstheyareinessencecultural.^31
Incontrastto Foucault,Habermasunderstandsnormsnotasemanations
of powerbutinstead as part of the communicative apparatus in which a
collectivityformsanunderstandingofitssharedvaluesandideals.
"Communicative" in Habermas's understanding means discursive,
and norms are therefore seen as discursively realized grammar of
interaction, existing among and for people sharing a common lifeworld
whilealsoplayingapivotalroleforthemaintenanceandreproductionof
this world. In such a perspective, norms are alwayspositionednorms,
grounded not in some general socio-political system but in actual
everyday routines of communication. In other words, only when the
normative beliefs held by one person coincide with what others can be
reasonablyexpectedtobelievecannormsfunctionasguidingbehavioral
andactantialchoices.Compliancewiththemisthereforeneversimplya
reflection of intervention from outside forces but rather a reflection of
communicativeprocessesgoingonamongpeople.
In his investigation of communicative structures, Habermas can
show how they unfold their regulatory potential in a context that is
always both social and semiotic: "normative content arises from the
structure of linguistic communication and the communicative mode of
sociation" (Facts and Norms297); once again, it is cultural.^32 In a
(^31) Bypositioningnormsatthejunctureofthesetwopowerstructures,Habermas
showshis indebtedness to Parsons, who had insisted that the presence, even the
validity of norms, is inseparable from their communicative make-up: a norm is
"averbaldescriptionoftheconcretecourseofaction,...regardedasdesirable,
combined with an injunction to make certain future actions conform to this
course" (Parsons, Social System 75). – My reading of Habermas's
"communicative power" has been aided by Jeoffrey Flynn's "Communicative
Power in Habermas's Theory of Democracy."European Journal of Political
Theory3.4(2004):433-54.Print.
(^32) Habermasrepeatedlyreturnstothiscommunicativefoundationofnormativity,
as in this often-quoted passage: "Just those action norms are valid to which all