what?

We wish to come out of the liberal identitarian and representational politics that has almost suffocated (academic LIS) scholarship and be more honest and serious about what we, as scholars of reference, are working with, against, and from. We, scholars, students, and workers of reference, are working with and for the imperial, genocidal, and violent state, hiding histories, claiming and territorializing knowledge and its structures, and supporting systematic points of practice. We are not working against the elite, we are the working class that are working against the class we are in. We are not exempt from white supremacy because of our own races or from other dominative structures because of our social locations, as our actions are to uphold and benefit from these ideas and ways of being in the world. 

The potential of academic librarians (the realm we are in and most familiar with) in influencing standards and knowledge making is bright, though slim. And the progressive, liberal or so called left citational praxis position does not confront, agree on, or interrogate the actual terms and categories (critical, radical, citation, politics) it projects and circulates. Is “citational justice” even possible in this knowledge/scholarly system we are in? And what is most important when we perform performances of reference? 

To us, the em/bodied form of knowledge is important in the creation, understanding, and growth of relationships between beings; we'd like to take up space to declare this on billboards, on the land, and in the digital sphere. 

While we do not deny the place of our waged position, we also have the ability to choose, to study, to politicize and make otherwise. We do not wish to perform for the success of ourselves or individuals, or institutions, or adhere to standards that are imposed upon us and 'save' time — shouldn’t we be more interested in honestly showing how we know? If automation can work for us to parrot Chicago and APA styles, why don't we refuse it and think about the process that naming a publisher cannot show?

This website includes a set of vignettes highlighting what the manifesto embodies and instructs, the results of play from us over the course of two years of conversation, arguments, and questions. They answer, question, come from, push against our manifesto. It’s not presented as a solution for everyone and though we are on this infinite expanse of the web, we do not impose any kind of standard on anyone, reader, in particular. We wish you were there for the whole conversation and performance, but these are the remnants of how we have questioned and known and un/re/learned.