Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

12 Performativity, Statistics and Bloody Words 183
will confirm the view that numbers achieve an ideal clarity of meaning, and indeed it is
partly such a thought that lay behind the experiments with language in which Leibniz and
others engaged. It is partly what computers achieve (and depend on). But to others, this will
demonstrate the ways in which numbers fall short of the very qualities of meaning upon
which our thought and being and our accounting for ourselves, are sustained .... (Standish,
2010, p. 214)
It is perhaps unnecessary to note that sympathy here lies with Standish’s ‘others’
and almost certainly, with Standish himself. Let us return to 666. In a sense what
has happened to it is emblematic of the false metaphysics vis-à-vis language that
Derrida’s philosophy tries to overturn. The ‘attribution’ of significance to 666 interestingly
demonstrates a common misunderstanding of the ways in which language
ordinarily works – 666 (the signifier) ‘signifies’ the devil (signified). As Derrida
shows us, this kind of logocentrism is precisely undermined by differance and language’s
translatability/untranslatability. The fact that the significance of 666 has to
be artificially attributed to it reveals the barrenness of numbers. They do not give
birth to any kind of ‘becoming’. Numbers are marks, but somehow not the ‘trace’
of anything. In this sense, they tell a half-truth about language, as they are not the
progeny of the metaphysics of presence. For Derrida, the metaphysics of presence
is not a wholly bad thing – it is what allows meaning to take place. Paying uncritical
lip service to it causes all the problems.
So far, we have looked at numbers and iterability. Statistics are of course numbers
but not just any old numbers. Statistics supposedly represent something that is there,
they offer the promise of a truth that is etched into the fabric of existence. Having
looked at the some of the ways in which numbers can become iterable, and how this
reflects a false metaphysics vis-à-vis language, we might say that something similar
is going on with the symbolic practice of statistics. Just as 666 ‘signifies’ the devil,
statistics are supposed to ‘signify’ some truth about the world. Consequently, statistics
as numbers look ‘clean’. Now, the process of accumulating statistics is bound
to be open to the linguistic slippages that apply to iterability as it generally works
in language. However, when statistics are shown, and it is interesting that statistics
are something we ordinarily ‘show’ (a point about aesthetics?) the processes behind
the accumulation of statistics are not usually made explicit. This is true for debating
politicians, or for school managers introducing statistics to teachers. The function
that statistics perform in many of their common usages is to render invisible the
complex processes that led to their status as data. This is what gives statistics the
lure of purity – they suture over all the messy stuff that led to their generation and
hide the ‘meaningful’ process that takes place before and below. I want to draw
explicit attention to the metaphor of the suture (a metaphor that Derrida regularly
employs) here. Sutures are made up of non-toxic substances that can be absorbed
by the body. Statistics, which, as numerals, ‘appear’ pure, have been absorbed into
educational practice?
That said teachers are often critical of the data supplied on their classes. They will
commonly complain about the targets their students are supposed to meet, ‘student
x has been predicted a level 5 – she’s never going to get that! It’s all a load of
rubbish’. Here the teacher shows suspicion towards the statistics generated, but it