Safety in Numbers: On the Queerness of Quantification

Abstract

Adam J. Greteman and Justin N. Thorpe examine how quantification constructs queerness. The landscapes surrounding American schools are littered with numbers, and numbers have become the dominant object used to portray contemporary school experiences. From scores on exams, numbers on a scale, and the quantification of violence against queer bodies, a rather strange safety in numbers has emerged. Numbers have come to illustrate what Jane Gallop calls “logical eroticism.” In contemporary educational discourses, instruments and the data they produce have come to speak and judge the reality of experience in order to make political demands persuasive (see Lorraine Daston, Ian Hacking, Theodore Porter, Nikolas Rose), and quantification promises progress and an end to any given crisis (e.g., obesity, anti-gay bias, achievement gap). Utilizing queer theory and rhetorical studies, Greteman and Thorpe critique the quantification of anti-gay bias violence, looking specifically at the major reports released by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network to explore the queerness of numbers (e.g., their fetishization) and the rhetorical-ness of quantification regarding the queer experience. Their project does not seek simply to negate the use of quantification or numbers, but, rather, critically investigates how such numbers impact and produce the subjective possibilities of queer students.