vii. Performance of Citations

Citations are performance: 

I/we hope you grow to think more clearly about who you are performing for, and perhaps eventually even drop that performance. 

Often performances are held in a state of disbelief, a fantasy. This professional performance, however, is deeply unhonest: we uphold the material and aspirational conditions to never reach the fallacy of promise. 

Why are we still performing this way? 

I have no solutions for a different kind of performance, but would like to at least be honest about where we are and what we are doing. Can we be honest with each other for at least 55 minutes every other month? Feel free to veil your honesty in gossip, in complaints, in polite critique. 

Citations are growth: 

Angela Davis spoke at a university auditorium to a group of people who did not even want to acknowledge white supremacy. She asked us to honor our ancestors, describe them, and name them. What an abrupt pull of our ancestors, into a chemical smelling concrete box, with no nature in sight. 

A high school friend posted that his ancestors would be proud of him, a graduate student at Harvard University, a school built on slave labor. Why would my/his foreign ancestors know or care what Harvard University is? This is not a wild dream. 

Joy James said, you feel uncomfortable with one political analysis, so you move onto the next. How do I cite the discomfort I had, which I shared with many who did not want to share that feeling? Who is the name I signpost for that feeling?  Or do I just wave some new red flag instead? 

I have used my refusal more than many – to industry, to universities, to jobs, to people. I am glad I did, backing away from that edge of the dupe, of which has been so expansive and is still growing. Sometimes on this edge it is lonely.