Citations as power
How to cite, how to bring the systems down
Hello darlings –
Are you ready to kick ass today? Let’s get to it!
Today I’m talking about citations: who to cite in our academic work, why, and how to not be a giant bag of dicks.
I’ll start with a premise. If you disagree with this premise, go fly a kite in a thunderstorm or whatever it is you do for fun.
The premise: We have enormous discretion in who we cite in most circumstances in our work. This discretion means we have choices. Each citation is a deliberate choice in the allocation of resources. Let’s choose wisely.
How do we choose who to cite?
Citations are about power.
As Sarah Ahmed writes in Living a Feminist Life: “Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow.” In my discipline, the power of citations in unequally distributed and rests in the hands of white men because people over cite them. This is just one way that academic disciplines are racialized organizations (if you haven’t already done so, please go order Victor Ray’s book. That’s today’s MHAWS tax).
What to do about this? Be conscious of your citation patterns. Use Jane Lawrence Sumner’s tool for checking the gender balance of your citations. (While you are at it, recommend that your library buy her book. Thanks. That’s today’s 2nd MHAWS tax). Think about why you might be inclined to cite 90% or 95% men in your work. Whose ideas are you saying have value?
Citations are about who you want to be in conversation with about ideas.
People often think about citations as a uni-directional relationship – I cite you and that’s it. But if you are citing living people, you are placing yourself into conversation with those people. Maybe you are some kind of psychic and just want to talk to dead people? Okay. Cool. You do you. But for the rest of us – who are the people that you’d like to know you are working in this area? So who do you want to notice your work? To read your work? To cite it?
What to do about this? Well, first off: stop citing assholes. Why do y’all do this? There are people that everyone knows are total douche-canoes and y’all are out here trying to catch their attention! Whhyyyyy? Instead, cite the people whose opinions you actually care about! Cite the people who you like! Citations can be a thank you. Finally, stop fucking citing sexual harassers and bigots and racists. Come on, friends.
Citations are strategic
Much of the research that I read cites only a few people who already have enormous power (or are, uh, dead). Y'all are out here with a ‘please sir may I have another’ view of citations, begging for attention from bullies that could not give a shit about you. But if we engage in feminist and anti-racist practices - if you think about citations and opportunity for us to engage in the redistribution of power, and we'll have a whole God damned buffet of fried chicken
What to do about this? You should be citing people that you want to review your work. You should cite people that have published work at the journals or presses you are sending your work to. Want someone to review your work or at least read it? Cite them more than once. Cite them on the first page. Cite their work at the journal you are sending your work to. These are strategic choices we can make to place our work in front of those who would like to read it. A friend once referred to the act of citation as “cultivating a friendly reviewer pool” – so who do you want in your pool?
Feminist and anti-racist citation practices are radical acts of defiance
The sexist and racist institutional patterns teach us that we must cite a certain set of old white dudes and no one else. Or maybe just those guys and their students. But instead, we can reimagine a world where our citations do not reinforce existing power structures but instead build community.
What to do about this? Think about citations as creating and strengthening community. Sarah Martin has this amazing thread on how she teaches citation as connection and recognition. The nature of racist and sexist systems is that we need system to beat them. How will you create a system\s where you break yourself of these old patterns of citation? I am far from perfect, but I’m better at citing because I use my pre-submission checklist to make sure that I follow these rules:
__ are the first 10 cites people that I like or that I want to read my article?
__ have I cited myself?
__ have I run my works cited through Jane’s gender balance checker and am I citing more than 50% women? (again, found here: https://jlsumner.shinyapps.io/syllabustool/ I aim for more than 50% women because of my field and because I’m trying to right some historic wrongs)
__ does my manuscript comply with the “Gray test”? To pass, my manuscript must at least cite two women and two scholars of color AND discuss the work in the text, i.e. no throw-away cites. (named after Kishonna Gray’s #citeherwork - thanks Kate Henne for the recommendation)
__ have I cited at least one grad student and one contingent faculty member? (This used to just be “someone junior than me” but as I have grown long in the tooth, that pool grew)
__ have I minimized my citations of assholes? (Impossible to eliminate this in political science, but I try)
__ am I citing *living* and *active* women scholars, i.e., not just one or two citations to work written in the 1970s that I read in grad school?
__ am I citing the people that I want to recommend as reviewers? Like, a lot?
(What am I missing? Tell me!)
Remember that citations are choices about power: we can choose to employ the discretion to reward those who already have power with more power or we can choose to redistribute that power. We can give power to bullies and assholes. Or we can… not. Choose wisely.
XOXOX
Mirya