Diffractive Possibilities: Cultural Studies and Quantification

Cultural studies have not shared the widespread belief in quantitative methods. On one hand, the dominant orientation of quantitative social science research continues to hold on to positivist assumptions of objectivity and the privileged access to the “truths” of natural phenomena via the logics of mathematics. On other hand, cultural studies have maintained a hermeneutics of suspicion toward the methods of quantification. But, to what extent does this suspicion toward quantitative inquiry compromise the deconstructive project of cultural studies by falling into the trap of the quantitative/qualitative and, related, nature/culture binaries? Building on new materialist ideas, the author develops an ontological reconfiguring of measurement and statistics that is informed by Barad's (2006) post-humanist performativity and diffractive method. The post-humanist deconstructive interventions on the nature/culture binary enable us to rethink the critical possibilities of quantification for the materialist analysis of power relations in cultural studies.