Number as Modulation: Immanent Inquiry and the Diagrammatic Reorientation of Method

Abstract

This methodological provocation advances immanent inquiry: an analytic inflection in working with numerical data once numeracy is understood as force in computational culture. Drawing on the cultural studies of numeracy and Deleuzian philosophy, it develops diagrammatic reorientation as a methodological practice attuned to modulation, excess, and becoming. Working through an empirical encounter with survey data in sports governance, the article shows how numerical forms act affectively and ethically within datafied research assemblages, unsettling the qualitative–quantitative binary without reinscribing it. Number, text, and diagram are treated as co-moving intensities on a shared plane of immanence, shifting method from representational capture toward responsive participation in emergent relations. Instead of rejecting computation or capitulating to its logics of capture, the provocation articulates ways of composing with numerical force while sustaining indeterminacy, care, and ethical becoming.

Keywords

method fold computational culture numeracy culture post-qualitative inquiry ethics quantitative-qualitative divide

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