Resisting and re/counting the power of number : the one in the many and the many in the one

In this chapter I turn the themes 'power,' 'discourse' and 'resistance' to contemplation of the place of qualitative accounts of experience within contemporary managerialist audit cultures and their preoccupation with quantity, number and counting. I specifically critique and resist the power and status of number and quantity as key indicators of what matters and what counts. I do this through play with and on vocabularies of 'number' and 'counting,' and through laying out an account of my thinking about discourse, narrative, subjectivity and experience. In contesting the privileged status of numerical counting, I elaborate a theoretical, philosophical and epistemological approach to subjectivity and narrated biographical accounts of experience. In so doing, I write-over one form of accounting (numerical) with another (narrative). I also resist recourse to validation by a vocabulary of number - where quantity is a proxy for significance, validity and quality- and emphasise the extent to which qualitative accounts of any 'one' are understood as simultaneously those of 'many.