Norms are performed and inhabited, not merely consolidated or subverted.

Evidence

Norms are not only consolidated and/or subverted, I would suggest, but per.. formed, inhabited, and experienced in a variety of ways. This is a point on which I think Butler would not disagree; indeed, in her writings she often re.. verts to the trope of the “psyche” and the language of psychoanalysis to cap.. ture the density of ties through which the individual is attached to the subjec.. tivating power of norms (see, for example, Butler 1997c). Butler’s exploration of this density often remains, however, subservient on the one hand to her overall interest in tracking the possibilities of resistance to the regulating power of normativity, and on the other hand to her model of performativity, which is primarily conceptualized in terms of a dualistic structure of consoli.. dation/resignifi ion, doing/undoing, of norms. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 169

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames a third way of inhabiting norms beyond the consolidate/subvert binary.
• XREF: Connects to Butler’s performativity theories already in the reader’s network on agency and subject formation. — connects to: Norms stabilizing into a combination do so because it works. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 637