In defense of feminist citation
1. It is 1997, I am 14 years old and completely, devoutly in love with punk rock. Living in a tiny town in the rural Midwest, punk rock simultaneously mobilized and soothed my anger, confusion and desires. Minor Threat, Op Ivy, the Descendants — they were my soundtrack for wanting a better world. As grateful as I am for the internet, there was a sense of magic during the 90s in exchanging mix tapes at shows, one of which changed my life. “Riot Grrrl Tracks” it said. Slant 6, Sleater-Kinney, Tiger Trap, Bikini Kill. I listened to them (over and over) slackjawed, almost embarrassed at the obvious challenge to my self-proclaimed feminism. I did not know women could sound like this.
2. It is 2003 and I am one year away from finishing college at a large public school on the West Coast. I’ve spent the last three years devouring critical theory. Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze — they were my soundtrack for wanting a better world. Finally I take a class with a section (a section!) on feminist theory. Helene Cixous’ “Laugh of the Medusa,” Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” Audrey Lorde’s Sister Outsider. I have never recovered from my initial exposure to these texts. (Nor would I want to.) I did not know women could sound like this.
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Much (but not nearly enough) has been written about women’s voices in public. Some excerpts from this conversation about conversations:
Mary Beard — It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it — it’s the fact that you are saying it.
Anne Carson — Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.
Dubravka Ugresic — The history of the “creative class” — artists, intellectuals, poets, philosophers — is long, dramatic, and almost entirely male, as is, of course, all of history. When we speak of the “public intellectual,” we all, men and women alike, automatically imagine men. There is, however, a parallel history that is seldom mentioned or even known: the history of female silence.
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3. A colleague sends around a journal article about the systematic racial disparities in citation practices, the ways that scholars of color are cited less often in papers, books and syllabuses. The call to insistently make room for scholars of color is utterly necessary, and echoes feminist agitation for lateral citations. (A friend of mine calls this feminist friendship bracelets.) Another colleague wonders if such agitation isn’t anti-intellectual, even chilling. Can’t we just add rather than subtract?
I think of the number of all-cis-men panels I’ve seen, the syllabuses that cite no people of color, the erasure of queer women from lectures on queer history. I think of the number of times I have been interrupted, talked over or had my ideas claimed by men. I think of the many women who have left the academy because of sexual harassment and violence.
There are many ways to mobilize feminist politics, and citation praxis may not be the best way all of the time. But when people call out bias in academic discourse, the assumption that people who have been actively, systematically excluded can now just be added suggests an even playing field, which even now, after so much work, is not the case. A concern about chill elides the way that historically marginalized people have long been left out in the cold.
I have written papers where I have committed to only citing women and trans men. Those papers are on topics of queerness and feminism. Certainly men have had important things to say on these topics, made claims worth engaging. When I have written these papers, I do not feel like I am ignoring or disparaging men. Instead it feels a little like I am at a riot grrl show where the lead singer shouts “ladies to the front!” It feels a little like a conference where I ask cis men feminist allies to wait until women and trans folk have spoken first. It feels like a conversation that I wanted to have without men because I wanted to know what it would sound like.
Originally published at jessalingel.tumblr.com.