I believe it is time to revisit a topic I considered in a Research Hub entry on 30 April 2019 about WPR and normativity. The topic remains of interest to many people. Most recently, Rönnblom and Edwards (2025) raise the question of normativity in WPR in their overview of developments in the WPR approach. I start my reflections on this question by stating briefly the argument as put by Rönnblom and Edwards (2025). I use direct quotes to ensure that the terms of the discussion are clear. I proceed to refer back to the 2019 entry to make a case for a specific understanding of normativity in relation to WPR. To put it briefly, I see WPR as a deeply normative enterprise. Disagreements on this stance tend to reflect competing understandings of normativity. I hope to clarify the basis of these disagreements in an attempt to move the discussion forward. I will also be defending the compatibility of poststructuralism and normativity, as elaborated in this post. 

Normativity in Rönnblom and Edwards

Rönnblom and Edwards (2025: 2) identify what they describe as a disagreement “within the post-structuralist field” about “value stances”:

“On one end of the post-structural spectrum of ideas, power is regarded as operating through politically located sets of value understandings and political alternatives, such as feminism and decoloniality (themselves each involving different versions within a shared core). At the other end of the spectrum are post-structuralist analyses that, while they acknowledge power and politics, largely eschew normative responses and specific ideas about alternative political solutions. The WPR approach is located toward this latter end of the field.” 

Later in the article, the authors restate their proposition that WPR is characterised by “the refusal of any normative or political position”. They draw a contrast with 

“post-structural analysis such as discourse theory with a post-Marxist legacy (Laclau and Mouffe) or interpretative analysis that also takes the intentions of subjects into account in the analysis, as well as includes suggestions for political change (c.f. Frank Fischer), or relational approaches concerned with power dynamics and class interests (e.g. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).”

In contrast, they conclude that “the WPR approach does not include any normative suggestions for political change and avoids assumptions of intentionality”. They describe this position as “in some tension with the intellectual, political, and personal normative concerns of feminism”. 

It seems to me that the distancing of WPR from normative concerns in this argument involves several different claims. 

These include: (i) a distancing from “value stances”; (ii) a distancing from “specific ideas about alternative political solutions”; and (iii) a distancing from “assumptions of intentionality”. 

As a modification of these claims, I will put the case that WPR reflects “value stances” and, going further, that the refusal of “specific ideas about alternative political solutions” and distancing from “assumptions of intentionality” actually reflect value commitments and hence indicate a deep-seated normativity. The argument here is that political commitments and political strategies – e.g., whether, or not, it is deemed appropriate and/or wise to endorse specific reform options – are normative in character. 

Meanings of normativity

Clearly, in these discussions, we are dealing with competing understandings of normativity. The debate about “normativity” in political theory relates to whether, or not, researchers are entangled in value commitments and/or whether, or not, they prescribe, on the basis of these commitments, what ought to be done. I suggest that there are two separate points here – first, the extent to which researchers’ views and positions reflect “values”; and second, the extent to which they are prepared to impose these values on others. Along these lines Kelly (2012: 2; emphasis added) distinguishes between what he describes as an “inflationary” understanding of normativity as broad value commitments, and a “much stricter definition of the ‘normative’ … which takes it as merely a by-word for prescription, which is to say for ‘oughts’”.

Accepting this distinction, WPR presumes some “broad value commitments” but it refuses to make those commitments prescriptive. Instead of promoting specific reforms, it advances strategies for interrogating reform proposals, looking to identify their assumptions, their genealogy and their effects (WPR questions; Chapter 1 Bacchi 2026). The argument is that such interrogation is required to prevent or modify reforms/policies that can do damage (“harm”) to specific groups. 

In Poststructural Policy Analysis (Bacchi and Goodwin 2016: 25), Sue Goodwin and I directly confront the question of whether, or not, it is possible to support an egalitarian politics while refusing to advocate specific reforms (i.e. to refuse to be prescriptive). There we argue that, not only are the two perspectives compatible, they are actually necessary to each other. This is because reform programs often buy into problematic premises that need highlighting and questioning. We offer the examples of “social inclusion”, “literacy” and “wellbeing” from Chapter 6 in the book.

 With Foucault (2001: 1431), therefore, the objective is a practice of continuous critique, engaging in “a work of problematisation and of perpetual reproblematisation”. In this Research Hub entry, I suggest that such a stance is itself normative – that it reflects a decision to take nothing at face value and to test interventions in relation to their effects (subjectification, objectification, discursive, lived; WPR Question 5 Bacchi 2026, p. 24). 

I am not suggesting that the issues at stake here can or should be reduced to semantics – that it’s just a matter of different definitions of “normativity”. Rather, I pursue the implications of Tanesini’s (1994: 207) argument that concepts (e.g. “normativity”) have no fixed meaning but “are proposals about how we ought to proceed from here”. It follows that the varied uses of the term “normativity” reflect specific political visions. The critical task, therefore, involves examining how “normativity” as a concept functions in diagnosing future directions. Following this argument, I make the case that normativity as “broad value commitments” allows us to consider the widest possible range of political and theoretical positions within its ambit while prescribing specific reform options carries the danger of imposing interventions with deleterious consequences for specific groups. 

So, what are the “broad value commitments” associated with WPR? I would suggest that there is a commitment to improve the lives of specific groups commonly marginalised and oppressed. I could call this a “social justice” agenda. My hesitation here relates to the many debates about what “justice” means and entails. In earlier Research Hub contributions (30 August 2024, 29 Sept. 2024), I deal with this ambiguity through, first, examining WPR through a social justice lens, and second, through examining “social justice” through a WPR lens. This “double” research strategy, associated with post-structuralism, is discussed later. 

Where is the evidence that WPR supports a social “justice” agenda? Here I provide a few extracts from my recent book, What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm (Routledge 2026). Chapter 3 (p. 51) emphasises how a WPR form of analysis provides policy workers and researchers with a means to “resist practices deemed to have deleterious consequences for specific people and groups of people” (the examples include people with disabilities, gender and the Sámi in Nordic countries). Chapter 8 highlights the role of a “genealogical sensibility” in WPR analyses. Genealogy is described as a “mindset” that “asks researchers to bring a critical eye to present injustices and inequities”. Chapter 19 (p. 229) states clearly that the point and purpose of identifying governmental rationalities, as in governmentality analyses (Chapter 7), is “to interrogate critically their premises and possible deleterious effects”.

I believe that there is no confusion in the research community about the point and purpose of a WPR form of analysis. I have been maintaining a Select Reference list of WPR applications (Welcome to the WPR Network! | Karlstad University (kau.se) for almost a decade. It is long and growing, with close to 1000 articles, chapters and theses explicitly adopting “what’s the problem represented to be?” as their starting research question. In absolutely every article, chapter or thesis, the expressed commitment is to, for example, “equality”, “diversity”, “inclusion”, reducing stereotyping, attacking oppression, reducing marginalisation, improving “rights”, improving the treatment of LGBTIQ subjects, Indigenous peoples, the Roma, those with disabilities, migrant groups, etc., etc. In each instance there is expressed concern with oppressive norms and normalisation. Clearly there are normative concerns at stake in the uptake of WPR as analytic strategy. In this spirit, the 2026 book (p. xii), acknowledges “the usefulness of the approach in supporting social justice commitments”. 

Rönnblom and Edwards (2025, p. 4) express concern about tensions between the WPR approach and “the intellectual, political, and personal normative concerns of feminism”. They acknowledge the important role of reflexivity but are unhappy that “WPR does not include any normative suggestions for political change and avoids assumptions of intentionality”. Again, here, I suggest it is not a matter of WPR lacking normative commitments (to feminism) but disagreements about political agendas. Specifically, in WPR emphasis is placed on recognition of contesting “versions” of feminism. The suggestion is that reforms that presume a singular feminist ethic (e.g. The Feminist Ethic of Care, Bacchi 2026: 123) can have deleterious political consequences for certain groups of women. 

As in the discussion above, I consider such political disagreements to be normative. Questioning the existence of a singular feminist ethic is a form of normative engagement, concerning what feminism (or “feminisms”) means. So too with disagreements about whether, or not, political analysis should target the intentions of political subjects. Decisions about analytical targets are, in my view, normative since they constitute proposals about how we ought to proceed from here (see Tanesini 1994, above). 

Poststructuralism and normativity

The question arises: can someone with declared poststructural sympathies (me and WPR) defend certain “values”? Isn’t there a basic contradiction? Don’t references to “values” imply truth statements inconsistent with a poststructural troubling of truth claims? I suggest: not necessarily!

There are long-standing debates about Foucault’s value commitments. Habermas coined the term “cryptonormativist” to describe Foucault, suggesting that he was a kind of secret or “closet” normativist, “publicly rejecting normative commitments while tacitly relying on them for criticism” (in Kolodny 1996: 67). Nancy Fraser (1989) also believed that Foucault’s unwillingness to declare his political ideals undermined his political analysis.

Kolodny (1996) provides a way forward in these discussions. Based on Foucault’s political commitments, he (64-65) argues that “Foucault’s work was self-consciously critical, and criticism is inescapably normative”. One does not need to dig too deeply to discern the political perspective adopted by Foucault. His desire to “transform the penal system” (and psychiatric institutions) was directly connected to his concern about the marginalisation of prisoners (and patients). As Catucci (2018: 329 ff) elaborates, in Foucault’s view, “in modern times prison has been the main technology by which our societies manage marginality”. Indeed, “all the social oppositions described by Foucault in his work – normal/abnormal, healthy/pathological, mad/reasonable – were built on the contrast between inclusion and exclusion” (Catucci 2018: 330). His defence of “subjugated knowledges” (Bacchi 2026, Chapter 9), includes the knowledge of the psychiatric patient, the ill person, the nurse and the delinquent. 

Kolodny (1996: 65; emphasis in original) argues that the “later Foucault resisted not the demand for norms, therefore, but rather the demand of a normative theory”. As Cynthia Coe (2011) explains, Foucault “refuses the polarity of nihilism and normative foundationalism”:

“If we are searching for normative foundations, what Foucault is up to will look like nihilism. But the purpose of his genealogical work is to illuminate the contingency of our intellectual quests in order to open up new practices of resistance to particularly modern forms of oppression.” 

Accepting Kolodny’s argument (above) that criticism is inescapably normative, WPR seeks likewise to explore the space between nihilism and normative foundationalism. In this view, “cryptonormativism” is “not a gratuitous evasion of normative theory, but an agonism with its uncertainties and imperfections” (Kolodny 1996: 78-79). 

In other words, in the argument I develop here, it becomes possible to endorse certain “values” (e.g. justice, equality, etc.) so long as space is retained to examine them critically (e.g. “justice”, “equality”, etc [notice the insertion of quotation marks in this application]). This position is described as a “doubling research strategy”. Lather (2001) introduces the notion of a “doubled research practice” to deal with what she calls “stuck places”: “a way of thinking through of some of the complexities, ambiguities and contradictions involved in the process of doing qualitative research that is concerned with recognizing difference and with pursuing social justice” (Gunaratnam 2003: 3).

A “doubled research strategy” involves working with and against analytic categories at the same time. Gunaratnam (2003) illustrates the usefulness of this strategy in relation to racial categories. While recognising “race” as a constructed category, she points out that dissolving the category of “race” makes it difficult to claim the experience of racism. At the same time, poststructuralist critiques of essentialist notions of “race” can “be used in empirical research to generate more complex insights into the production of social location and experience”. It is therefore possible, and politically useful, to work with and against racial categories.  

In Mainstreaming Politics (2010), Joan Eveline and I describe this double move as embracing the simultaneous fixing and unfixing of meanings. In that book, for example, at times we adopt the convention of putting “women” and “men” in quotation marks to trouble the categories; at other times we use women and men, without quotation marks, as having an assumed meaning. This shifting of position reflects the complex political circumstances within which we navigate. 

For political reasons it is sometimes necessary to question the category “women” but at other times it is necessary to adopt the category. There is no confusion here. Rather, there is a determination to shape one’s strategy to particular political objectives, with the decisions about when to fix and when to unfix meanings dependent upon reflexive judgment about the political exigencies of the particular situation. The fixed meanings we necessarily impart on some occasions must be regarded as temporary and subject to continuous critical scrutiny in order to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings. The question is not whether to fix meaning – since for a range of reasons fixing must occur – but when to fix meaning and who to involve in the “fixing” exercise. 

To capture this double move in relation to “justice” or “social justice” I suggest approaching the topic through two perspectives: first, reflecting on WPR through a social justice lens; second, questioning “social justice” through a WPR lens. The reference to social justice in the first position has no quotation marks, signalling a desire to fix meaning. The use of quotation marks in the second position signals a willingness to unfix meaning. As a strategic intervention, these two proposals work together to elaborate new, more inclusive meanings. 

With this strategy I feel comfortable declaring my “broad value commitments”, recognising that they are not truth statements, but targets for critical analysis. It is this route that WPR travels in its normative positioning. This “self”-problematising stance produces reluctance to become prescriptive about change agendas, along with preparedness to practise, and indeed embrace, scepticism about the “truths” that are produced (Bacchi 2026, Chapter 6).

Conclusion

My hope in this entry is to encourage ongoing discussion of these important politico-theoretical issues. I find it useful to identify the three separate topics that are under consideration in these discussions: (1) positions on “values”; (2) positions on political reform strategies; (3) positions on the place of intentionality in political analysis. It is also useful to clarify (at least) two meanings of normativity: (1) as broad “values”; and (2) as willingness to endorse specific reforms. 

I make the case that WPR is normative in the sense of endorsing “broad value commitments” but that it resists translating these into specific reforms. A supplementary argument is that it is possible to characterise political positions (e.g. the refusal to advance specific reforms) as themselves normative in character. Finally, I argue that sustaining a critical approach to declared “values” makes it possible to produce a “normative” poststructuralism. We can defend egalitarian precepts so long as they remain open to interrogation, highlighting the importance of “self”-problematisation (“reflexivity”; see Chapter 6 in Bacchi 2026 on the need to sort through some of the complexities surrounding this issue).

References

Bacchi, C. and Eveline, J. 2010. Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering practices and feminist theory. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. 

Bacchi, C. and Goodwin, S. 2016. Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Catucci, S. 2018. The Prison Beyond its Theory: Between Michel Foucault’s Militancy and Thought. In E. Fransson, F. Giofrè and B. Johnsen (eds) Prison Architecture and Humans. Olso: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.

Coe, C. D. 2011 Review of: D. Taylor (Ed.) Michel Foucault: Key Concepts. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: An Electronic Journal. Available at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/michel-foucault-key-concepts/ (viewed on 21 January 2019).

Foucault, M. (2001) [1984]. À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique: Un aperçu du travail en cours (rewritten version). In D. Defert, & F. Ewald (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Dits et Écrits, tome II. Paris: Gallimard.

Fraser, N. 1989. Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions. In N. Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 17-34.

Gunaratnam, Y. 2003. Researching Race and Ethnicity: Methods, Knowledge and Power. London: Sage.

Kelly, M. 2018. For Foucault: Against Normative Political Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Kolodny, N. 1996. The ethics of cryponormativism: A defense of Foucault’s evasions. Philosophy and Social Criticism  22(5): 63-84.

Lather, P. 2001. Postbook: Working the Ruins of Feminist Ethnography. Signs, 27(1): 199-227.

Rönnblom, M. & Edwards, R. (04 Sep 2025): A critical explanation of uses of Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2555388 Tanesini, A 1994, ‘Whose language?’, in K Lennon & M Whitford (eds), Knowing the difference: feminist perspectives in epistemology, Routledge, New York, pp. 203– 216, DOI: 10.4324/9780203216125