Toward a Speculative Librarianship

Authors

  • Michael Kirby

Keywords:

bullshit, no innocence in their buffoonery; they are the king’s jesters

Abstract

(Academic) citation is a representational practice of hollow, ruined potential professional accumulation of intellectual capital. Critical librarianship finds itself in the same situation as Saint Anthony: beset by interpretive demons (Freud, Nietzsche, Marx),  nearing total evaluative exhaustion, wandering in a theoretical desert of its own creation. “Where am I?” the lonely figure shouts as he’s lifted into the air. Prayer, even as a last resort, seems intolerable. What happens when critique loses its way?

Hieronymus Bosch, Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony, 1501

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Published

2026-02-13