Citation

Abstract

This experimental essay examines citation as a multifaceted feminist keyword and praxis that is political, epistemological, mathematical, personal, temporal, navigational, correctional, capital, methodological, and aspirational. The piece itself is a performative journey through the myriad processes, politics, and poetics of citation, an attempt to embody citation's inherently in/elegant awkwardness, the way it can serve as a deeply personal window into the process of writing, living, and being. This journey reveals how citation, though often portrayed as a neat kind of resolution, remains splayed open and unresolved in numerous ways. It is an attempt to lay bare the process of building toward something that is not entirely one's own, a process routinely contained in a tidy footnote or cradled between two parentheses. Intentionally raising more questions than it answers, the following prompts the reader to interrogate various assumptions about how certain words become keywords, the boundaries of their definitions, and the emotional, epistemological, and conceptual baggage that accompanies them.

Ancestral cites: Citation politics and canonical figures in Protestant communities

“…I trace in this section two separate conversations on ancestral and canonical figures in order to pursue a central question: What does it mean to reincorporate a past figure into a canonical conversation, in either an academic or Protestant communal sense? Though a small literature has been emerging on ancestors, citation and canon formation (Ahmed, 2017;Mariner, 2022;McKittrick, 2020), scholarly work on ancestors in Christian communities, such as LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant's (2014: 2) ethnography where "talking to the dead is a longstanding yet under explored spiritual practice," tell us that ancestralization is a multistranded cultural process that comprises different activities and relations. Paying attention to the variability at play in the cultural work of making and relating to ancestors can lead to interesting implications for cultural initiatives of decolonization, whether academic or religious, and their widely varying qualities and effects.…”

Feminist cites: A review of feminist relations to and citations of the canon

“…Has there been any evident impact of our changing understanding of texts on our systems of citation? No; “citation sutures a subject to a voice, a person to (a) work,” anthropologist Kathryn Mariner (2022: 216) observes in her feminist reflection. I have wondered why we still do this.…”

“…The problem of selecting citations that Mol discusses has been humorously illustrated by Mariner (2022). In her short experimental essay, she attempts to cite comprehensively.…”

The Unbearable Whiteness of Citational Practice in US Medical Anthropology

“…For example, the form of the book is held as superior to the form of the blog post, even if the content is essentially the same. Kathryn Mariner's (2022) recent discussion of citation demonstrates the limits and possibilities of form. What if thinking takes the form of needlework, crochet, or quilting (Chin, 2020; Hughes‐Strange, 2021; Sehdev, 2020)?…”