The Public Square: Normativity and Normalization Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University

Dianna Taylor 2009

ISSN: 1832-5203

Foucault Studies, No 7, pp. 45-63, September 2009

ARTICLE

Normativity and Normalization

Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University

ABSTRACT: This article illustrates ways in which the concepts of the norm and

normativity are implicated in relations of power. Specifically, I argue that these

concepts have come to function in a normalizing manner. I outline Michel Fou-

cault’s thinking on the norm and normalization and then provide an overview of

Jürgen Habermas’s thinking on the norm and normativity in order to show that

Habermas’s conceptualizations of the norm and normativity are not, as he posits,

necessary foundations for ethics and politics, but in fact simply one philosophical

approach among many. Uncritically accepting a Habermasian framework therefore

produces normalizing effects and inhibits alternative and potentially emancipatory

thinking about ethics and politics. Having problematized the requirement of norma-

tive foundations as it is currently articulated, I conclude by examining the emanci-

patory potential of a particular aspect of Foucault’s work for the practice of philo-

sophy.

Keywords: Norm, Normativity, Normalization, Freedom.

I believe that one of the meanings of human existence – the source of human

freedom – is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or

immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and

inhuman law for us.1 ~ Michel Foucault

I recently presented a conference paper in which I argued that Foucault’s

conceptualizations of the norm and normalization are relevant for contemporary

feminism. I justified my claim in part by asserting that Foucault’s elucidation of the

power effects and contingency of particular social norms (such as sex and gender),

Michel Foucault, ‚Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual.‛ Interview with Michael

Bess (November 3, 1980), IMEC (Institut Mémoirs de l’Édition Contemporaine) Archive

folder number FCL2. A02-06.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

extends to the idea of the norm itself. For Foucault, the norm is a norm. But it is one

of those norms (e.g., sex and gender) that effectively presents itself not as a norm,

but as a given and therefore outside of power – benign and closed to critical analysis.

Just as he does with the idea of sex in Volume I of The History of Sexuality, Foucault

traces across several of his Collège de France courses the emergence of the idea of

the norm as a modern concept and illustrates its implication in modern relations of

power. In my paper, I argued that this tracing and illustrating is important because

it effectively supports Foucault’s contention that nothing, even (for Foucault,

especially) those concepts, categories, and principles that appear to be most

fundamental to making sense of the world, need simply be accepted, and that such

refusal creates possibilities for developing alternative modes of thought and

existence which increase persons’ capacities and expand their possibilities without

simultaneously increasing and expanding the proliferation of power within society.

Refusing to simply accept what is presented as natural, necessary, and normal – like

the ideas of sex and the norm itself – presents possibilities for engaging in and

expanding the practice of freedom.

During the question and answer period, a conference participant asserted

that Foucault’s work could possess only minimal relevance for feminism. ‚It’s not

normative,‛ the individual stated flatly, while several people sitting nearby nodded

their heads in agreement. Neither the questioner nor the tacit supporters elaborated;

indeed, the assumption appeared to be that no elaboration was needed: to contend

that Foucault’s work was lacking in normative content simply spoke for itself. The

burden was therefore on me, for if Foucault’s work was not in fact normative there

was no way it could possess relevance for feminist thought and practice.

In this essay, I present the long version of my response to persons such as the

conference participants described above. My focus here is not the relevance of

Foucault’s work for feminism, but rather the more fundamental claim that his work

is ‚not normative.‛ In making that assertion, it seemed to me at the time (and still

does) that the conference participants missed the point of my paper. From their

perspective, one may critically analyze things like what it means to say a practice is

normative, how particular norms or normative practices function, and whether a

particular norm is oppressive, but the necessity of the norm and normativity for any

discussion of ethics and politics, let alone for articulating emancipatory ethical and

political theory and practice, must be accepted; indeed, it is simply assumed. My

point, by contrast, was that assuming and uncritically accepting, as my questioner

did, the necessity of a concept not only for promoting freedom, but also and more

fundamentally for making sense at all, is itself normalizing and that, moreover, part

of the way normalizing norms work is by masking their own effects of power and

thus inhibiting the kind of critical analysis that would have allowed the questioner

to perceive the uncritical assumptions she was making.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

A norm is normalizing if, as noted above, it links the increase of capacities

and expansion of possibilities to an increase in and expansion of the proliferation of

power within society. Simply put, normalizing norms encourage subjects to become

highly efficient at performing a narrowly defined range of practices. This is the case

with gender, where subjects are divided into two mutually exclusive groups, the

appropriate behaviors of which are predetermined and which these subjects are

encouraged to repeat over and over again. In time, the repeated behaviors become

embedded to the point where they are perceived not as a particular set of prevailing

norms, but instead simply as ‚normal,‛ inevitable, and therefore immune to critical

analysis. Normalizing norms thus hinder not only critical analysis itself but also, to

the extent that they become naturalized, the recognition that such engagement is

needed or possible at all. So, for example, while the specific character of acceptable

gender roles may change over time, the idea persists that women and men are

different in some fundamental ways that simply must be accepted. To the extent

that normalizing norms maintain or strengthen the link between increased capacities

and expanded possibilities and increased power and inhibit or even prevent the

cultivation and exercise of practices which elucidate and loosen this link, these

norms are counter to freedom.

The response my conference paper generated suggests to me that the

concepts of the norm and normativity have come to play a normalizing role within

philosophical discourse, particularly with respect to ethics and politics. While I

believe that a broad analysis of the normalizing effects of the norm and normativity

is called for, in this essay I limit myself to analyzing these normalizing effects

relative to the work of Foucault, for if Foucault’s insight into the normalizing effects

of the idea of the norm, let alone the broader ethico-political relevance of his work, is

to be taken seriously the characterization of his work as ‚not normative‛ must be

addressed. In order to address this issue, I contrast Foucault’s conceptualization of

the nature and function of the norm with that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s

work is paradigmatic of the view that ethics and politics generally and emancipatory

ethics and politics more specifically can be meaningfully articulated only if they are

grounded in certain normative principles. Analyzing his work in relation to Fou-

cault’s therefore provides an effective means through which to illustrate how the

demand for normative criteria has come to function as a kind of normative criterion,

to illustrate the contingency of this norm, and to analyze its normalizing effects.

Exposing the demand for normative criteria as both contingent and normalizing, I

argue, facilitates measured analysis and therefore better understanding of work such

as Foucault’s which, under prevailing conceptions of the norm and normativity, is

seen as possessing limited ethical and political relevance or at worst as ethically and

politically harmful. Once the demand that Foucault’s work satisfy prevailing ideas

about the norm and normativity is lifted, his refusal to comply with, as well as his

criticism of, that demand no longer renders his work ethically and politically

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

irrelevant or dangerous; instead, its value in promoting practices of freedom can be

explored.

I want to be clear that while my argument reflects a Foucauldian perspective,

I do not mean to reject Habermas’s work or pit the work of Foucault against that of

Habermas; nor will I attempt to show that the work of these two thinkers is in fact

compatible.2 Indeed, I believe these kinds of strategies assume and therefore

perpetuate the very ways of thinking about the norm and normativity that I seek to

call into question. I do want to make a point about how the uncritical acceptance of

Habermasian notions of the norm and normativity necessarily posits Foucault’s

work as non-normative and therefore ethically and politically irrelevant or harmful.

Yet my broader aim is to show that it is only through critical interrogation of what

has been presupposed or uncritically accepted that the emancipatory potential of

any philosophy – whether work such as Habermas’s which asserts the necessity of

normative foundations for ethics and politics, or such as Foucault’s, which seeks to

elucidate the power effects of such assertions – can be effectively explored. My

question in this essay, and the direction in which I see Foucault’s work pointing, is

therefore not, ‚Is it normative?‛ but rather ‘What motivates the question, ‚Is it

normative?‛ and what are the effects of this question?’ Simply put, my question is

not ‚Is it normative?‛ but ‚Is it normalizing?‛

I proceed by outlining relevant aspects of Foucault’s thinking on the norm

and normalization across several of his Collège de France courses,3 and then

providing an overview of Habermas’s thinking on the norm and normativity. I next

A good deal of scholarly analysis has been generated that addresses the problem of the

norm and normativity in the work of Foucault and Habermas. The problem figures

centrally in two edited volumes, Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas

Debate, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1994) and Foucault Contra Habermas, eds.

Samantha Ashenden and David Owen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), and is also

apparent in a number of the essays (including Habermas’s own) in Foucault: A Critical

Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1986). All of these volumes

contain essays that make valuable contributions to Foucault and Habermas scholarship,

and some of them (such as James Tulley’s contribution to the Ashenden/Owen volume,

which I cite later in this essay) move in the direction of my own analysis. But I think the

majority of the contributions ultimately accept prevailing notions of the norm and

normativity and, hence, end up covering the same ground concerning whether

Foucault’s work is normative or not.

Foucault addresses the problematic nature and function of norms in his published work,

Discipline and Punish and Volume I of The History of Sexuality being particularly important

in this regard insofar as these texts illustrate the workings of disciplinary power and

biopower, respectively. I have chosen to focus on the Collège de France courses because

within their context one can clearly see Foucault formulating his ideas as he works

though various problems. The courses thus provide valuable insight into the

development of Foucault’s thought across time which is not as apparent within the

context of his published works.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

show that Habermas’s conceptualizations of the norm and normativity are not, as he

posits, necessary foundations for ethics and politics, but in fact simply one

philosophical approach among many. On the one hand, then, uncritically accepting

a Habermasian framework produces normalizing effects; on the other hand, ways of

thinking about, conceptualizing, and practicing ethics and politics that do not

require a particular understanding of ‚normative foundations‛ and which could in

fact possess emancipatory potential are possible. Having problematized the

requirement of normative foundations as it is currently articulated, I conclude by

examining the emancipatory potential of a particular aspect of Foucault’s work for

the practice of philosophy.

Foucault’s conceptualizations of the nature and function of the norm and

normalization can be traced through four of his Collège de France courses:

Psychiatric Power (1974); Abnormal (1975); Society Must be Defended (1976); and

Security, Territory, Population (1978). In these courses, Foucault associates the norm

with specifically modern forms of power. He argues that with the rise of modernity,

sovereign power found itself unable to effectively control all aspects of increasingly

complex societies, with the result that certain techniques of power which had up

until that point had been employed only within religious contexts were generalized

to society more broadly.4 Foucault sees the norm as being at the heart of these

techniques of modern power.

In his 1974 and 1975 courses, Foucault ties the norm to disciplinary power,

which targets individual bodies in order to train subjects that are simultaneously

efficient and obedient. In Psychiatric Power, Foucault argues that within a

disciplinary context, the norm functions ‚as the universal prescription for all‛

disciplinary subjects.5 The following year, in Abnormal, Foucault identifies the norm

as the ‚element‛ upon which ‚a certain exercise of power is founded and

legitimized.‛6 He also elaborates on precisely how the norm functions within a

disciplinary context, arguing that the norm ‚brings with it a principle of both

qualification and correction. The norm’s function is not to exclude and reject.

Rather, it is always linked to a positive technique of intervention and transfor-

mation, to a sort of normative project.‛7 Under disciplinary power, Foucault writes,

‚there is an originally prescriptive character of the norm,‛ in the sense that the norm

‚Far too many things,‛ Foucault states, ‚were escaping the old mechanism of the power

of sovereignty, both at the top and at the bottom, both at the level of detail and at the

mass level.‛ See Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de

France 1975-76, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 249.

Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France 1973-1974, trans.

Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2006), 55.

Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975, trans. Graham

Burchell (New York: Picador, 2003), 50.

Ibid.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

determines what is normal.8 Subjects constitute themselves and are in turn

constituted through techniques of power that presuppose the norm, construed as an

ideal or ‚optimal model.‛9

As a result of his evolving conception of the nature and function of modern

power, Foucault modifies his conception of the norm in the 1976 course. Power does

not only target individual bodies, Foucault has come to realize in Society Must Be

Defended, it also targets populations by way of a second form of modern power

which he refers to as biopower. Generally speaking, biopower proliferates through

the actions of the State in such a way as to regulate populations at the biological

level in the name of promoting the health and protecting the life of society as a

whole. This protection and regulation intersects with the disciplining of individual

bodies within the context of modern societies, Foucault argues, and the norm is the

mechanism along which this intersection occurs. It circulates between the disci-

plinary and the regulatory; it is ‚something that can be applied to both a body one

wishes to discipline and a population one wishes to regularize.‛10 While the norm

still founds and legitimizes power, it does so specifically by linking disciplinary and

biopower and thus facilitating the flow of power through and across all facets of

modern societies.

Foucault returned to the Collège in 197811 having further modified his

conception of the norm. The norm can still be said to found and legitimize modern

power by providing a link between disciplinary power and biopower, but in

Security, Territory, Population he argues that it functions differently within

disciplinary and biopolitical contexts. With discipline, the norm establishes the

normal: individuals are brought and bring themselves into conformity with some

pre-existing standard. With biopower, the norm is established from several

‚normals,‛ as represented specifically by ‚curves of normality;‛ statistical analysis,

according to Foucault, constitutes a key technique for regulating and managing

populations. From these normals, the ‚most normal‛ or the ‚optimal normal‛ – i.e.,

the norm – for a particular population is established: within a biopolitical context

‚the norm is an interplay of differential normalities . . . the normal comes first, and

the norm is deduced from it.‛12 As Foucault describes it, different normal curves are

produced by studying a population, from those normal curves the norm gets

established as an optimal or ideal normal which is then brought back to bear on the

population in order to regulate that population – that is, to dictate how the

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-

1978, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 57.

Ibid.

Ibid., 252-253.

The 1976 course ended in March of 1976; the 1978 course did not commence until January

of 1978.

Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 63.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

population ought to behave. Since populations are not fully engaged in relations of

power until this prescriptive function is implemented, the foundation and

legitimation of biopower still hinges on the norm in important ways.

The idea that the norm functions differently within disciplinary and

biopolitical contexts leads Foucault to in turn mark a distinction between the

techniques of power to which the norm gives rise in these respective contexts. Prior

to the 1978 course, Foucault has referred to all power techniques originating with the

norm as ‚normalization.‛ In the 1974 course, Foucault specifically describes the

function of disciplinary power in these terms. Within a disciplinary context, he

argues, ‚uninterrupted supervision, continual writing, and potential punishment

enframed [the] subjected body and extracted a psyche from it . . . [the] individual is a

subjected body held in a system of supervision and subjected to procedures of

normalization.‛13 In the 1975 course, Foucault again speaks of normalization as

consisting of techniques he associates with disciplinary power. He describes these

techniques as ‚simultaneously positive, technical, and political,‛ and argues that

they function in the service of bringing subjects into conformity with a pre-

determined norm.14

At the beginning of the 1976 course, Foucault invokes the idea of

normalization primarily in order to distinguish it (and therefore disciplinary power)

from juridical or sovereign power. ‚The discourse of disciplines,‛ he asserts, ‚is

about a rule: not a juridical rule derived from sovereignty, but a discourse about a

natural rule, or in other words a norm. Disciplines will define not a code of law but

a code of normalization.‛15 By the end of that course Foucault has ceased to use the

term ‚normalization‛ altogether and speaks only of ‚normalizing societies‛

(societies characterized by the linking together of disciplinary power and biopower).

Given that at this point Foucault was rethinking the norm’s role within

modern relations of power, it seems likely that he was beginning to rethink the

nature of normalization as well. Indeed, by 1978 Foucault has marked a distinction

between normalization, which he now attributes solely to biopower and describes as

the process of establishing the norm from different normal curves, and the

disciplinary process of bringing subjects into conformity with a pre-determined

norm which he now refers to as ‚normation.‛16 This distinction between norma-

lization and normation should not be seen as an indication that Foucault is no longer

concerned with disciplinary power and its ‚normizing‛ techniques. As the rest of

the 1978 course, as well as others of Foucault’s texts,17 makes clear, he continues to

Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 56-57.

Foucault, Abnormal, 50.

Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 38.

Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 63.

See Michel Foucault, ‚Governmentality,‛ in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality,

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

view modern societies as being characterized by both disciplinary and biopower –

and although it is less prominent and not characteristically modern, by sovereign

power as well. Insofar as Foucault explicitly argues that when they emerge, new

forms of power do not entirely displace existing forms, the norm retains its function

of linking the discipline of bodies and the regulation of populations of linking

normation and normalization. Likewise, the norm retains its function of founding

and legitimizing modern power, despite the fact that in normalization the norm is

derived from the normal.

In sum: Foucault posits the norm as playing a fundamental role in the

emergence, legitimation, proliferation, and circulation of modern power. The norm

establishes what is normal. Techniques of normation and normalization in turn

function to ‚make normal.‛ On the one hand, they intervene within both individual

bodies and populations in order to bring them into conformity with particular social

norms. On the other hand, in doing so such techniques perpetuate the power

relations that the norm founds and legitimizes by reproducing norms within the

sociopolitical landscape to the point that they come to be seen not as produced at all

but simply as natural and necessary. Within a disciplinary context the norm gets

established by, for example, factory managers who determine that workers should

be able to produce a product in a certain amount of time. The workers’ bodies are

trained so that they become highly effective at performing the particular operation

that will facilitate the desired outcome. Within the context of biopower the norm

gets established by, for example, economists who deem a certain level of unemploy-

ment or poverty acceptable or even necessary within the overall population in order

for the economy to grow. These ‚normal‛ levels of unemployment or poverty are

cultivated within the population as a whole.18

It is important to bear in mind that not all individual social norms are

normizing/normalizing. From a Foucauldian perspective, social norms act as ‚nodal

points‛ within a broad power matrix. Power passes through and along norms, and

these points of intersection can either facilitate or inhibit the further circulation of

power. Norms that facilitate power’s circulation don’t pose a problem. Given that

he conceives of power in terms of relations, Foucault considers subjects to be free

when they are able to modify, negotiate, and/or reverse these relations – when in

eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press, 1991).

Foucault shows that institutions – prisons, schools, factories, the military – play a key

role in the establishment and proliferation of norms and, hence, in the proliferation of

modern power. I am grateful to the editors of this journal for pointing out to me that

Foucault believed developing new, non-normalizing/normizing institutions was an

‚important and crucial issue,‛ at the same time that he admitted he had ‚no precise idea‛

of how such development would occur. See Michel Foucault, ‚Sex, Power and the

Politics of Identity,‛ in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer

(New York: Semiotexte, 1989), 389.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

other words, the circulation of power within society is at least relatively unimpeded.

It is therefore the sedimentation of power through the uncritical acceptance of

particular norms as natural and therefore necessary that is cause for concern.

Normalizing norms are those which facilitate such sedimentation by linking the

increase of capacities and expansion of possibilities to an intensification of existing

power relations. One way in which sedimentation occurs, taking the example given

above, is through certain conceptions of worker productivity or certain

understandings and levels of poverty and unemployment coming to be seen as

natural. Over time persons not only don’t think critically about these phenomena,

they don’t give them much thought at all; worker productivity, poverty, and

unemployment simply become part of the landscape – what has to be assumed in

order for discussions about the economy to be entered into. Such naturalization

effectively promotes acceptance and conformity with prevailing norms on both an

individual and societal level. Moreover, the norm provides the grounds not only for

distinguishing ‚normal‛ and ‚abnormal‛ individuals and populations, but also for

sanctioning intervention into both in order to ensure conformity or bring into

conformity, to keep or make normal, and also to effectively eliminate the threat

posed by resisting individuals and populations.

Habermas construes the nature and function of the norm very differently

than Foucault does. Whereas for Foucault the norm founds and plays a key role in

the functioning of modern power, for Habermas the norm demarcates the limits of

power; it distinguishes what is good and valid from what is not, where goodness

and validity are determined and legitimized not by relations of power but by reason.

The basics of the Habermasian perspective are outlined in his book, Moral

Consciousness and Communicative Action.

Norms, according to Habermas, possess ‚ought character.‛19 ‚Norm-related

speech acts,‛ he argues, make validity claims, in the sense that when one says ‚x is

good to do‛ or ‚one ought to do x,‛ one is making a claim that x is morally

justifiable; that is, one is saying that one has ‚good reasons‛ for doing x or that one

‚ought to do‛ x.20 To be legitimate, the validity claims that normative speech acts

make must be ‚general.‛ Habermas takes the position that general agreement or

consensus about what constitutes moral and immoral action has to be able, at least in

theory, to be reached in order for harms to be intelligible as ethical violations. In the

absence of some shared and communicable standard which harmful actions can be

said to violate, such actions are not merely idiosyncratic but in fact incoherent. The

normativity of norms is thus interconnected with their intelligibility, making claims

Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian

Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 44.

Ibid.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

of ‚normative rightness‛ different from claims of ‚propositional truth‛ and there-

fore in need of a different kind of justification.21

On the one hand, the justification for norms needs to be relevant for lived

experience. Thus, while the ‚basic intuition‛ of Kant’s categorical imperative

functions as a guide for Habermas, he rejects the notion that a single individual

testing her or his maxims can sufficiently generate general validity.22 For Kant moral

deliberation is ‚monological,‛ whereas for Habermas it is collective in the sense that

it is grounded in and carried out by members of the lifeworld.23 Moreover, for

Habermas moral deliberation aims to restore a moral consensus that has been

disrupted and thus reflects a common as opposed to an individual will.24

On the other hand, to be valid the justification for norms cannot simply be

determined by the vicissitudes of human affairs. It is for this reason that Habermas

locates justification within the form – rather than in the content or outcome – of

rational argumentation. He refers to this form as ‚communicative action.‛ As

opposed to strategic action, where one actor attempts to manipulate or coerce

another in order to achieve personal satisfaction or gain, communicative action takes

the form of rational argumentation aimed at consensus; it is characterized by the

expectation that reasons can be provided for why certain norms should exist or not,

and the communicative process itself entails persons providing such reasons. As

Habermas puts it, ‚one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the

illocutionary binding/bonding effect of the offer [to make good on assertions by

giving reasons] contained in the speech act.‛25

The validity of norms is thus ‚guaranteed,‛ so to speak, by the fact that they

are the products of a process that is rational as well as collective. Habermas

expresses this idea in what he refers to as the principle of universality (U), which

states that for any valid norm, ‚*a]ll affected can accept the consequences and the

side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of

everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known

alternative possibilities for regulation).‛26 As conceived by Habermas, the principle

Habermas argues that what he refers to as ‚non-cognitivist approaches‛ are insufficient

for this purpose. On the one hand, such approaches contend that general agreement

cannot ‚ordinarily‛ be reached in ‚disputes about basic moral principles:‛ on the other

hand, they assume the failure of ‚all attempts to explain what it might mean for

normative propositions to be true.‛ In other words, because non-cognitivist approaches

are unable to account for how normative speech acts differ from claims to propositional

truth, such approaches cannot possibly provide the unique justification that normative

speech acts require. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 56.

Ibid., 64.

Ibid., 67.

Ibid.

Ibid., 58; Habermas’s emphasis.

Ibid., 65; Habermas’s emphasis.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

of universality ‚makes agreement in moral argument possible in principle.‛27 This

governing principle of rational discourse gains its justification from what Habermas

refers to as ‚transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions.‛ These universal presuppo-

sitions are rules which are, Habermas argues, implicitly accepted by anyone who

participates in practical discourse and which are in turn generated by or internal to

that discourse itself; they are conditions for the possibility of rational argumentation

as such.

As James Tulley explains, there are two types of transcendental-pragmatic

presuppositions: conventional and post-conventional. Conventional presuppose-

tions ‚include logical-semantic rules of consistency . . . rules of mutual recognition

among participants . . . and rules of reciprocity.‛28 Post-conventional presuppose-

tions include the following rules: ‚every subject with the competence to speak and

act is allowed to take part in discourse (the principle of universal respect); everyone

is allowed to question and introduce any assertion whatever and express his or her

attitudes, desires, and needs (the principle of egalitarian reciprocity); and no speaker

may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising these rights (the

principles of non-coercion).‛29 It is as an expression of these transcendental-

pragmatic principles generally, but also, as Tulley points out, of the post-

conventional type more specifically, that the principle of universality can itself

function as a kind of regulatory ideal for moral deliberation. ‚Every person who

accepts the universal and necessary communicative presuppositions of argument-

tative speech and who knows what it means to justify a norm of action,‛ Habermas

writes, ‚implicitly presupposes as valid the principle of universalization, whether in

the form I gave it or in an equivalent form.‛30 The principle of universality thus

expresses the interconnection of intelligibility and normativity: intelligible moral

deliberation, insofar as it is in fact intelligible, must necessarily possess certain

normative foundations in the form of the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions

and the principle of universality (U).31

The idea that not only the normative status but also the intelligibility of

norms depends upon their ‚general acceptance‛ (i.e., their shared and

communicable character) by participants in a common lifeworld attaches absolute

and universal character – a certain ‚ineluctability,‛ as Habermas puts it – to norms

Ibid., 56.

James Tulley, ‚To Think and Act Differently: Foucault’s Four Reciprocal Objections to

Habermas’ Theory,‛ in Foucault Contra Habermas, eds. Samantha Ashenden and David

Owen (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 102.

Ibid.

Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 86.

The principle of discourse ethics (D), which states, ‚only those norms can claim to be

valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as

participants in practical discourse,‛ provides additional normative grounding. See

Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 93.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

and normativity. ‚We cannot,‛ Habermas writes, ‚retract at will our commitment to

a lifeworld whose members we are.‛32 Citing Peter Strawson, Habermas

acknowledges that participants in the lifeworld do have recourse, ‘‚as a refuge, aid,

or out of simply curiosity,‛’ to a kind of third-person perspective which he refers to

as the ‚objectivating attitude of the nonparticipant observer.‛33 Nevertheless, again

invoking Strawson, Habermas argues that as human beings ‘‚we cannot, in the

normal case‛’ maintain this objectivating attitude ‘‛for long or altogether.‛’34

Subsequently, anyone who participates in practical discourse implicitly agrees to the

rules (i.e., the transcendental pragmatic principles) which govern that discourse and

thus, by extension, to (U). As noted previously, Habermas contends that attempts to

evade these rules render an actor incoherent or, more specifically and more

troubling, ‚schizophrenic and suicidal.‛35

It is the nature of this ineluctability that needs to be critically analyzed in

light of normalization. In Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile, Martin

Matuštík argues that the ineluctable character of Habermasian norms and

normativity ought not to be viewed as absolutist or foundational, but rather as a

kind of ‘‚groundless‛ performative holism.’36 ‚It is holism rather than

foundationalism,‛ Matuštík writes, ‚since we always begin . . . in a context of a

preinterpreted lifeworld. This holism is performative (without grounds secured

apart from speech or action), since we can never reach an absolutist point of view

inside or outside history.‛37 I have found Matuštík’s analysis of Habermas’s work

quite valuable, in large part because by situating that work within its sociopolitical

context Matuštík elucidates the origins and nature of Habermas’s philosophical

concerns. Doing so he shows that it is neither dismissal nor lack of understanding

but rather precisely those concerns themselves that cause Habermas to create and

respond more to caricatures of thinkers like Foucault than to the thinkers

themselves.38 Matuštík argues, rightly I think, that Habermas’s caricaturing of

thinkers such as Foucault stems from his own fears about the nature of modern

societies. As I see it, these are fears that defining the parameters of rational

discourse too broadly will allow for the emergence and proliferation of fascist

discourse. For Habermas, therefore, Foucault’s fear that defining such parameters

too narrowly (and accepting a particular understanding of rational discourse to be

Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 47.

Ibid., 46.

Ibid.

Ibid., 102.

Martin Beck Matuštík, Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile (New York:

Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 222.

Ibid., 223.

‚Given his theoretical sophistication,‛ Matuštík writes, ‚an unnuanced polemic with the

complexity of postmodern thought remains the weakest part of Habermas’ debates.‛ See

Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile, 226.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

constitutive of rational discourse as such) will constrain the emergence of liberatory

discourse (or at least pose a threat to the conditions under which such discourse

might emerge) is not merely unfounded but potentially oppressive.

Despite the value of Matuštík’s analysis in contextualizing and elucidating

Habermas’s work, it nonetheless seems to me that he gives Habermas an overly

generous reading on the point of ineluctability: it is difficult to see how asserting

that the very intelligibility of normative truth claims requires the acceptance of

certain principles is not absolutist. And even if it is not, such an assertion is

normalizing. It demands uncritical acceptance of the norm and normativity as

regulative ideals within ethical and political discourse, limits possible ways of

critically analyzing prevailing approaches to ethics and politics and prevailing

conceptualizations of ethical and political subjectivity and agency, and thereby links

the increase of capacities (new modes of ethical and political thought and action)

with the increase of power (some modes of thought and action are bracketed off

from critique while others are simply prohibited).

To illustrate this point more fully, let us take as an example the modern

concept mentioned at the outset of this essay: sex. Like the norm, sex is a

characteristically modern concept that is perceived as natural and therefore beyond

critical analysis. Moreover, like the norm, it is also construed as necessary not

merely for emancipation, but also functions as a means through which persons

become intelligible at all. While particular sexual norms generally possess

normalizing potential, Foucault sees the norm of ‚sex‛ itself as particularly

problematic in this regard because it is a key component in the creation,

proliferation, and establishment of sexual norms within society (‚the deployment of

sexuality‛); oppression may stem not only from particular constructions of sexuality

in terms of, for example, the ‚normal‛ and the ‚abnormal,‛ but also and perhaps

most importantly from the uncritical acceptance of the norm of sex as a ‚natural‛

and necessary foundation upon which individual sexualities and subjectivities are

based.39 The concept of sex, for Foucault, functions as a mode of legitimation for and

delimits the boundaries of sexuality – it renders us intelligible to ourselves and to

one another – and, as such, it is in particular need of critical interrogation: ‚it is

precisely the idea of sex in itself that we cannot accept without examination,‛ he

argues.40 Moreover, insofar as sex is seen as fundamental to who one is, generating

and obtaining knowledge about sexuality is synonymous with having access to

truth. The interconnection of sex and truth, in turn, encourages the acceptance and

internalization of sexual norms and thus masks their normalizing character: persons

perceive the proliferation of sexual identities and discourses as signifying freedom

from sexual repression when in fact it situates subjects squarely within in relations

See Foucault’s discussion of the deployment of sexuality in Volume I of The History of

Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1990).

Ibid., 154; Foucault’s emphasis.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

of power. ‚We must not,‛ Foucault argues, ‚think that by saying yes to sex one says

no to power.‛41

I am suggesting that the demand for normative criteria functions as a mode

of legitimation for and thus delimits the boundaries of ethical and political

philosophical discourse. Just as ‚sex‛ simultaneously renders subjects intelligible as

sexual subjects and circumscribes the forms sexual subjectivity may take, so does

this demand simultaneously function as a condition for the possibility of ethics and

politics and circumscribe ethical and political forms and discourse. For Habermas,

ethical and political discourse accepts and therefore validates the principle of

universality and the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions; likewise, ethical and

political subjects assume and act in accordance with both. What must be assumed

for the purposes of coherent, rational argumentation about ethical and political

norms cannot itself be open to such argumentation. Insofar as this is the case, (U)

and the transcendental-pragmatic presuppositions come to be seen as necessary and,

over time, natural and therefore inevitable. To question them, as I have done here,

thus appears to be not merely ethically and politically irrelevant or dangerous but

nonsensical. Naturalizing (U) and the presuppositions and characterizing

challenges to their necessity as incoherent (not to mention schizophrenic) effectively

inhibits different kinds of ethical and political thinking to the point that different

ways of thinking come to be seen as simply impossible. Persons become adept at

conceptualizing ethics and politics in ways that assume the necessity of certain

‚normative foundations,‛ but lack the ability not only to imagine what ethics and

politics might look like outside of such a framework, but also to see the framework

for what it is – a particular and limited product of prevailing modes of thought and

existence – and therefore to critically reflect upon and expand beyond it.

At this point it is important to reiterate that Foucault does not emphasize the

significance of ‚thinking differently,‛ as he puts it, for its own sake.42 As stated at

the outset of this essay, from a Foucauldian perspective refusing to uncritically

accept what is presented to us as natural and therefore necessary is tied to the

practice of freedom. Normalizing norms are potentially oppressive because, while

they do in fact increase persons’ capacities, such an increase is achieved at the

expense of other possible modes of thinking and acting. Limiting of possibilities, for

Foucault, both curtails the flow of power throughout society and hinders persons’

ability to negotiate current power relations. Insofar as Foucault sees freedom being

characterized not by an escape from power but rather by the ability to negotiate

power relations in ways that increase capacities and possible modes of thought and

existence, for him such curtailment has the potential to lead to states of domination

in which all aspects of persons’ lives are dictated to them.

Ibid., 157.

Michel Foucault, ‚Introduction,‛ in Volume II of The History of Sexuality: The Use of

Pleasure (New York: Vintage, 1990), 9.

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

From a Foucauldian perspective, therefore, Habermas’s insistence on the

necessity of normative foundations for intelligible and emancipatory ethical and

political discourse runs the risk of rearticulating the same kinds of harms he wants

to mitigate through this insistence. But for Foucault, this does not mean that

Habermas’s work must be rejected. And herein, as I see it, lies a really important

and fundamental difference between Foucault and Habermas. Foucault recognizes

his own perspective as a perspective; it is historically, socially, and politically bound,

and he leaves it up to his readers to determine for themselves the value of the tools

he offers for mediating against domination and promoting freedom – to subject

those tools to the ‚test of . . . contemporary reality.‛43 For Habermas, on the other

hand, such testing is possible only up to a point: there are certain ‚ineluctable‛

aspects of human existence that have to be accepted in order to make sense of the

world and insure some sort of conditions for the possibility of freedom. This

requirement of uncritical acceptance means, by extension, that there are certain

questions that cannot be asked, certain modes of thought and existence that are not

valid, and certain modes of critical engagement that cannot be allowed. Both

Foucault and Habermas are concerned with such conditions, but where Habermas

seeks to identify and preserve them, Foucault argues that they need to be constantly

critically analyzed and recreated. For Habermas, some certainty about the world –

even if only a tiny sliver – is possible. For Foucault, not only is certainty impossible,

our desire for it is shaped by modern modes of thought that are interconnected with

a drive for control and domination; as such, not only certainty but the desire for it

needs to be critically analyzed and resisted. In sum, with Foucault we do not get

certainty. With Habermas we do not get it, either; the problem is that we do get the

empty belief that we can have it, a belief that encourages us to search for certainty

rather than to find effective ways of resisting domination and promoting freedom

within a world without it. The annals of modern history – particularly the twentieth

and, thus far, the twenty-first centuries – illustrate the degree to which harm can

result from, as William Connolly puts it, the ‚systematic cruelty‛ that ‚flows

regularly from the thoughtlessness of aggressive conventionality.‛44 While

Habermas in no way engages in or promotes such thoughtlessness, I think he

maintains a kernel of a mode of thought that, under the right conditions, has the

potential to develop into it. Insofar as this is the case, I suggest, paraphrasing

Foucault, that ‚it is precisely the demand for uncritical acceptance – including of the

norm and normativity – in itself that we cannot accept without examination.‛

Habermas’s primary criticism of Foucault is that he engages in performative

contradictions which throw him back upon a kind of ‚crypto-normativity‛ that

Michel Foucault, ‚What is Enlightenment?‛ in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow

(New York: Pantheon, 1984), 46.

William E. Connolly, ‚Beyond Good and Evil: Michel Foucault’s Ethical Sensibility,‛

Political Theory (August 1994), 366.

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

involves relying upon the same concepts he critiques. From the perspective of

Habermas, Foucault cannot simultaneously invoke a norm (freedom, for example)

while simultaneously critiquing the very idea of the norm by illustrating its

implication in relations of power. As I have argued here, however, Habermas’s

perspective holds only if his own conceptualization of the norm and normativity are

accepted as the necessary framework through which any appeal to values such

freedom can take place. Foucault’s illustration of the implication of the norm in

relations of power does not irrevocably taint the idea of the norm, but it does mean

that all norms have the potential to be normalizing, and that persons have to be

vigilant in their critical analysis of prevailing modes of thought and existence. All

norms implicate us in relations of power, but whereas some are normalizing and

promote power at the expense of freedom, others mitigate power and promote

freedom. Norms that function in a normalizing manner under prevailing conditions

may not always be normalizing, and those which promote freedom within a

particular sociohistorical context may not always do so. Again, it is up to persons to

be engaged enough in the world to be able to ‚separate out, from the contingency

that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking

what are, do, or think . . . to grasp the points where change is possible and desirable,

and to determine the precise form this change should take.‛45 By way of conclusion,

I would like to examine three values, considered by Foucault to be useful tools in the

kind of separating, grasping, and determining described above, which I believe are

valuable for the practice of western philosophy.

For Foucault, values and principles are not grounds but rather effects of

critical engagement with the present. While values and principles might be

translated into strategies, these would really only be meaningful within the context

of the present from which they spring. The notion of ‚strategy‛ here needs to be

construed in terms of what Foucault refers to as ‚problematization,‛ the

‚development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts that pose problems for‛

prevailing – one could say normative – modes of existence.46 I’ve suggested that

Foucault’s refusal to comply with prevailing modes of thought and existence stems

from his recognition of the normalizing potential of norms, including the demand

for normative criteria itself; as such, it reflects a deep concern with promoting

freedom. And I think, moreover, that Foucault’s conceptualization of values and

principles as effects of critical engagement with the present goes a long way toward

explaining his articulation of ethics in terms of an ethos or ‚a way of life.‛ In a late

interview, an interlocutor asks Foucault if he is a ‚nihilist who reject*s+ morality.‛47

After responding with an emphatic, ‚No!,‛ Foucault proceeds to articulate what he

Foucault, ‚What is Enlightenment?,‛ 46.

See Michel Foucault, ‚Polemic, Politics, and Problematizations,‛ in The Foucault Reader,

ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 385.

Foucault, ‚Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual.‛

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

refers to as the three ‚moral values‛ which he practices and ‚within which *he

situates his] work.‛48 The first value is refusal – specifically, refusing ‚to accept as

self-evident the things that are proposed to us.‛49 As I have argued here, if persons

uncritically accept what is presented to them as natural and necessary they are

unlikely to recognize harmful (i.e., normalizing) effects stemming from prevailing

modes of thought and existence and, therefore, to be in a position to do anything

about such effects. So refusal is crucial in creating conditions under which making

change is possible. The second value Foucault identifies is curiosity: ‚the need to

analyze and to know, since we can accomplish nothing without reflection and

knowledge.‛50 Once refusal opens all aspects of existence to critical analysis, persons

need to undertake that analysis. Foucault makes clear that it is only through critical

engagement with our own historical actualities that we can identify harmful

practices, work to end or alter them, and endeavor to proceed along different lines.

Refusal and curiosity pave the way for the third value he identifies, innovation: ‚to

seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined.‛51

These three values can be seen to inform and in turn be rearticulated through

what Foucault refers to as a ‚politics of ourselves.‛52 From a Foucauldian

perspective, practicing refusal, curiosity, and innovation can facilitate a loosening of

the interconnection between increasing persons’ capacities and possibilities and

intensifying power. While activities that are considered political in a traditional

sense – such as a protest, campaign, or voter registration drive – could certainly

entail refusal, curiosity, and innovation, the ‚politics‛ Foucault refers to is not

limited to this type of activity; persons can cultivate the kind of critical stance

reflected in the values of refusal, curiosity, and innovation in a variety of ways.53

Insofar as this is the case, I think that engaging in a politics of ourselves needs to be

Ibid.

Michel Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛ This is the first of the two Howison Lectures

Foucault delivered at UC Berkeley on October 20 and 21 of 1980. The second lecture is

titled ‚Christianity and Confession.‛ I am using the version of ‚Truth and Subjectivity

that is housed in the IMEC Archive, folder number D2 (1). Slightly different versions of

these lectures were delivered at Dartmouth College in November 1980. The Dartmouth

lectures appear in Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (New York:

Routledge: 1999), 158-181.

Ladelle McWhorter provides an important analysis of the two primary practices Foucault

identifies as cultivating a critical attitude: sex and drugs. As McWhorter points out,

Foucault’s discussions of these two practices are usually dismissed as expressions of his

own predilections and have therefore not received serious philosophical consideration.

She also offers informative analyses of two practices of her own: gardening and line

dancing. See Ladelle McWhorter, Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual

Normalization (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).

Taylor: Normativity and Normalization

understood as cultivating what Foucault variously refers to as a way of life, an ethos,

and an attitude – a particular way of constituting and conducting ourselves as

subjects that both informs and is reflected in what we do.54 Moreover, given its three

key aspects this ethos or attitude needs to be understood more specifically as

‚critical‛ in a Foucauldian sense, where persons recognize limits but refuse to accept

them as absolute, natural, and necessary. As Judith Butler puts it, ‚critique will be

that perspective on established and ordering ways of knowing which is not

immediately assimilated into that ordering function.‛55

Philosophical activity may be a means by which to cultivate a critical attitude,

but only if it contains a ‚political dimension.‛56 That is to say, philosophy is critical

to the extent that it concerns itself with ‚what we are willing to accept in our worlds,

to refuse, and to change, both in ourselves and in our circumstances.‛57 Through the

practice of philosophy, persons can conduct historical analyses of how things have

to come to be the way that they are – can conduct what Foucault calls ‚ontologies of

the present‛ – and through such analyses identify how things might be different and

work toward making them so. Foucault makes this point in a different way in the

Introduction to Volume II of The History of Sexuality when he describes what he

believes to be the role of philosophy within contemporary society:

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently

than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if

one is to go on looking and reflecting at all . . . [W]hat is philosophy today . . . in

what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it

might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already

known?58

Foucault is here describing a mode of philosophical engagement that does not seek

to substitute existing, positive ideas for harmful ones or to uncritically assert

prevailing concepts, standards, and principles that are no longer relevant for

contemporary reality. He is not interested in, in other words, ‚a critical philosophy

that seeks to determine the conditions and the limits of our possible knowledge of

the object.‛59 Instead, he engages in and in turn endeavors to foster ‚a critical

philosophy that seeks the conditions and the indefinite possibilities of transforming

See Michel Foucault, ‚Friendship as a Way of Life,‛ in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed.

Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 135-140.

Judith Butler, ‚What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue,‛ in The Political, ed.

David Ingram (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 215.

Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛

Ibid.

Foucault, ‚Introduction,‛ in Volume II of The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, 8-9.

Foucault, ‚Truth and Subjectivity.‛

Foucault Studies, No. 7, pp. 45-63

the subject, of transforming ourselves‛60 and, therefore, of transforming the world in

which we live. This is a philosophy grounded in critical reflection on and engage-

ment with the present (with how the present has come to acquire its particular

character) which aims at promoting freedom or at the very least at (re)creating the

conditions for its possibility. Such critical reflection and engagement involves

identifying normalizing practices, analyzing their effects, and developing new, non-

normalizing modes of thought and existence. Possibilities for change lie neither in

despairing in the face of nor trying to gloss over the complexities of modern

societies, but rather precisely in acknowledging and engaging the depths of such

complexities which shape but do not determine the nature of such acknowledgment

and engagement.

Ibid.

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Normativity and Normalization Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University

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