In the Sociology of the sanction, the sanction has been seen as a tool used to affirm and defend norms and, in line with this view, to change behavior. As such, it views the sanction as a signifier pointing toward the norm (or the distance between the norm and behavior) as signified. Postmodern reformulations have long questioned the existence of ‘real’ targets for signs; transferred to the sanction, this leads to a loss of the norm as anchor for the sanction and a turn towards a view of sanctions as floating signifiers which only point toward other signs. Taking recourse to Derrida, Stanley Fish and Foucault, this article will attempt a view of sanctions in which floating signifiers take up assumptions of belonging and (re)produce them.