NotNormativelyHuman 185
is transformed into regulatory power and where "societal problems
resonate in the private life spheres.. ." (Facts and Norms367). Such
resonances are not exhausted by pressures to comply with normativities
but they also affect the status of the modern liberal subject as address
andhosttonormsaswellastheirproducer.
The ascendency of Foucauldian theory has directed the attention of
theory in the Humanities to the role of governance in defining and
policingnormativitiesrelatedtothebiologicaldimensionofhumanlife.
Against this biopolitical approach, which by now has itself become a
critical normative, the Habermasian focus on norms as discursively
realized techniques of social integration and reproduction has the
distinct advantage of being culturalist in essence—culture here broadly
understoodasthesiteofstrugglesoverthemeaningoftheworldshared
byacollective.
Moreimportantly,alsoforthepresentinquiry,Habermas'stheoryof
normative integration acknowledges that in modern polyethnic and
multicultural societies of which the U.S.-American one is the most
explicit example, norms are not simply "there" but are inserted into
iterative processes of communicative interaction as Habermas makes
clear,herewithspecialreferencetoculturalnorms:
Cultural heritages and the forms of life articulated in them normally
reproduce themselves by convincing those whose personal structures
they shape, that is, by motivating them to appropriate productively and
continue the traditions.... When a culture has become reflexive, the
only traditions and forms of life that can sustain themselves are those
thatbindtheirmemberswhileatthesametimesubjectingthemselvesto
critical examination and leaving later generations the option of learning
from other traditions or converting and setting out for other shores.
(S truggles130-31)Such a model of communicatively realized norms would, in my
view, connect in useful ways with some of the current core interests of
cultural critique, even of the Humanities in general.^33 This is especially
(^33) My assessment of the situation of these disciplines is based on a series of
articles on "Theory Now" published in the Winter 2011 edition of theSouth