On the Politics and Practice of Citation: A Conversation, Part 1*

also known as “Genesis, Speculations, Refusal: Shit-Talking Citation in Academic Libraries”

Abstract

(Academic) citation is a representational practice of hollow, ruined potential professional accumulation of intellectual capital. This conversation documents, contextualizes, and extends the special issue’s genesis and intervention as an experiment in refusing “better citation” reforms and instead questioning the very category, legitimacy, and institutional function of citation itself. Emerging from years of working together and learning from one another across space and time, the conversation with the editors, jaime ding and Jorge Lopez-McKnight, lays out the origins of the project, sketches and explores the stakes and problems of academic citation, and frames the issue itself—much like this conversation—as a performance aimed at unsettling academic libraries’ citational common sense. Across the exchange, citation is theorized not as neutral representation of intellectual genealogy but rather as a mechanism of surveillance, extraction, and professional accumulation, tethered to intellectual property regimes, publishing economies, and the (re)production of scholarly and institutional value. The form was also key, beyond the initial conversation itself; after this dialogue wrapped up, the issue’s peer reviewer entered as another interlocutor, adding comments that were then taken up and responded to in-text by the original participants. The final piece stages dialogue at multiple levels (transcript, review conversation, and comment-thread exchange) rather than presenting peer review as a one-directional verdict or a single interaction as the end of the conversation.