Inheriting Merit

The fourth chapter diffractively analyzes the ontology of the SAT as a measuring apparatus and its intra-actions with conceptions of “meritocracy”; how the instrument is understood by test-takers and how that influences preparation (if any); and the intra-acting performative effect of enfolding historialities of the grandparents education with grandchild SAT performance.

Parenting Performativities

The third chapter is the first of two demonstrated diffractive analyses. This chapter begins by examining the question of the extent to which the performative practices of parenting are enfolding historialities in which the parents grew up. And, given the ways in which the forces of race, gender, and class relations are often empirically found to converge in the performativities of parenting, it also (re)considers how the lenses of diffraction and assemblages can be helpful for critical quantitative inquiry of parenting practices.

Cultural Studies and Quantification

Chapter two then discusses how the belief in the methods of quantification has not been widely shared in cultural studies. This chapter builds on the previous chapter’s new materialist deconstruction in order to rethink and reconsider the possibilities of quantification via a new focus for what Barad (2007) refers to as a diffractive methodology. It is via a diffractive methodology that the possibilities of quantification are enabled for cultural studies and critical social inquiry.

Enfolding Possibilities

The conclusion to Inheriting Possibility critically considers how social policies of social mobility have delineated both what is possible and impossible. It then discusses what has learned from theoretical interventions as well as empirical results. Finally, it provides some remarks on the enfolding possibilities of where critical inquiry must go.