We are barely a week into the second Trump administration and the outrage is spilling forth. It’s almost too much to grasp, really. Norm violations are busting out all over. And I’m just talking about Lauren Sanchez’s inaugural outfit.
But speaking of norms, Tal Fortgang has a review of Olivier Roy’s The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms.
“When we no longer share widespread cultural understandings, especially normative judgments (‘rape is wrong’) and guidance (‘sexual encounters should proceed within relationships to guard against exploitation’), nothing can be left to chance or the unsaid. Nothing is implicit, which is why universities make students undergo training about how to have one-night stands, and those trainings include the instruction, echoed in ‘affirmative consent’ laws, to receive an unambiguous ‘yes’ before each stage of the encounter. Our interactions, sexual or platonic,…
