NotNormativelyHuman 207
project for cultural critique, more important perhaps than just scanning
textsorculturalpracticesfortheirpresence^50 becausenorms,aswehave
seenabove,areamongtheprincipalconduitsthroughwhichgovernance
enters individual life. Foucault's work on the "carceral structure of
society" (DisciplineandPunish304) and its attendant normativizations
is probably the most important reference here.^51 But contra his
perspective, we need to acknowledge that the nexus he described
betweennormativity andgovernmentalitynevertellsthewholestory(if
it ever did). Norms are never unambiguously "there;" the fact that God
sawfittoinscribehisTenCommandmentsontwotablesofstone(Holy
Bible,Deut.5:22)canbereadasanexpressionofthedesiretopreserve
thenormsofacommunityandprotectthemagainstthecontingenciesof
time and space. And so, as critics we might do well to look not only at
the power of norms (which is more uncertain than Foucault's analytics
sometimes suggest) but also at the processes through which they come
into an always unstable, volatile existence. And this latter factor
determinesalsothecompellingforceagivennormmighthave.
Manynorms,notonlytheonesthatare"cultural"inanarrowsense,
derivefromnon-stateactors,suchasthemedia,includingalsothemore
recent and seemingly informal social media. Borrowing a phrase from
Paolo Virno coined in only a slightly different context, one might, with
regard to norms, speak of "publicness without a public sphere" (40-
42).^52 All this does not make norms any less political while it insists on
(^50) I am referring here to a method canonized by Lawrence Grossberg in his
Cultural Studies in the Future Tense(2010). Here, norms are addressed in the
context of "power," very broadly understood, and cultural critique is charged
with exposing "how power infiltrates, contaminates, limits, and empowers the
possibilitiesthatpeoplehavetolivetheirlives..."(29).
(^51) Itshouldbenotedhere,asatokenofthedeferencepaidinCulturalStudiesto
Foucault,thateventhoughheneveraddressedquestionsofsenescence,hiswork
is nonetheless scoured for references as the collection Powell, Jason L., and
Azrini Wahidin.Foucault and Aging. New York: Nova Science Publishers,
- Print.shows.
(^52) In hisGrammaroftheMultitude,Virno addresses the issue of what happens
when the general intellect does not address a reorganization of the political
domain in post-Fordist societies. Failing to do that, the ideas circulating among
the multitude do not work towards a liberation of human beings but produce