595 words, about 2 minutes to read (300 wpm).
First published on 2024-07-28.
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Whether writing on science, philosophy, or culture, society demands of us "citationism". Our works must be referential, placing themselves alongside old ideas, justifying their existence through contrast with or superiority over those ideas. But while citationism is certainly commendable in its quest to avoid repeated thought, in practice it often runs in danger of either suppressing thought entirely, or reserving it solely for a handful of academics too immersed in dusty old thoughts to come up with anything truly new.
I might get in trouble for claiming this, but in contrast to the hard sciences, in philosophy everything is up for grabs[1]. We do not have a single complete framework with which to describe or evaluate our experiences, morals, or organisational structures; thus ideas formed in a near vacuum can often be far more revolutionary than those formed through immolation by the literature.
This is not to say that we should ignore our academic history, and it's certainly not anti-intellectual. Far from it. But we should comprehensively understand our history as a *community*, not as individuals. We should each read[2] and read and understand the old and the contemporary ideas, but crucially we should compose *as we go*, and trust that forces of discussion and disagreement will lead us to the relevant insights in that which we have not read, and inform what we read next. The easiest way to find the argument that refutes yours is to publish yours. Let's leverage that.
Oppressive citationism runs even deeper. Consider (ironically, here lies a citation) the paper "Citationism as academic erudition and as a strategic action"[3], which contains another argument:
Being erudite represents an important characteristic of the academic, causing academic prose to be marked by an aura of sophistication and intellectual elitism. When erudition manifests in the practice of citationism, it can constitute a communicative distortion strategy instrumentalized to avoid or minimize debate or more accurate argumentation.
Citationism evokes in the uninitiated reader confusion, a sense of inadequacy to refute the stated arguments, and often even an inability even to understand the arguments. Thus, the dominance of the writer (and/or the intellectual hegemony) is preserved. Those familiar with the cited works are likely to be part of the hegemony already, the rest of us have other things to do. To make it worse, many of the most referenced philosophers are famously difficult to understand. Take Hegel, so supremely unintelligible to the vast majority of the populace that depressed philosophy students make memes about it:
So, two practical commitments: Firstly, I reject any propensity to self-suppress posts on this blog for lack of being well-read enough on the topic. I will be wrong many times, but my ideas will be raw and fresh, unburdened by excessive citationism. Secondly, I reject in all but extreme cases any posts which cannot be understood without extensive prior reading.
And here is a request: this blog is likely to get more even more philosophical and political in the near future. If you have any opinion on the topics, or know of other people's that I might be interested in reading[2], please comment! I'm trusting in conversation to keep me to account. To those of you who have been commenting already, whether publicly or in private, a sincere thank you!
1: That's not to say that citationism isn't also a problem in the sciences.
2: or watch, or listen, or whatever.
3: Vizeu, Fabio. "Citationism as academic erudition and as a strategic action." Cadernos EBAPE. BR 22 (2024)
Abby Hatch at 2024-09-16 14:52:16:
This really resonates. I left grad school for the law, and have struggled with the pressure of the literature while I try and continue some of my academic work.
One thing you said that was really helpful was that we should think of literature from the communal rather than individual perspective. idk if this is what you meant, but part of that seems like it should include recognizing cultural osmosis and tangential exposure as a real form of knowledge. Like obviously i shouldn't write a biography of Foucault without reading him, but i also shouldn't feel guilty for citing "discipline and punish" for the premise that rehabilitative models of prison tend to value a human's physical sovereignty over their psychological or spiritual integrity.
One thing i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on is the role of the market for academic jobs and publications in undermining the communal nature of the enterprise. Obviously, there is a value in promoting the scarcity of slots for academic publication, but there is also a reasonable desire to make use of the finite number of publications that receive more than a few eyeballs. That seems to incentivize against the experimentalist "publish to learn" model you're suggesting.
Also, I like your Noodles LP!
Abby Hatch at 2024-09-16 14:54:08:
Whoops, sorry for the double (now triple!) comment. I also promise, I did not format that as a giant block of text XD
Ellie at 2024-10-18 17:07:56:
The formatting was my mistake in the web design, I've fixed that now :D (I also took the liberty of removing one of the duplicate comments)
I really like your point about cultural osmosis and tangential exposure, I hadn't come across those before but I agree!
I am going to answer your point about the academic job market somewhat cheekily and simply say that I'm not sure there should be an academic job market as such at all. Perhaps this is unpragmatically utopian, but if we were in a society with, say, a Universal Basic Income that covers living costs, then I think we could remove most of the negative competitive nature of academia, and maintain the primary motivator as curiosity or similar. That's not to say that there isn't a role for the market, just that truly communal enterprise can more easily exist with a safety net than in unhindered market capitalism.
As for publications and the publish-to-learn model, I think a key part (that I maybe should have gone into in the main post) is decentralism -- publishing more does add to the total volume of publications and thus the percentage of publications that aren't useful to many, but organic social networks should be a force to filter and improve them -- if you write something particularly interesting, your friends/colleagues are more likely to show it to their friends, more people comment and informally peer-review, etc, and the interesting original ideas end up bubbling up to the width of audience that makes sense for that idea. In theory this is how social media platforms are supposed to work, of course we have seen that there are many failure modes to watch out for there (not least market interests...)