The number of citations that a philosopher's work gets is taken into account in the hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions of many philosophy departments. In addition, repeated citation of a given article can establish a new direction in the discipline, a new style of doing philosophy, or some other novel trend in philosophy. Furthermore, frequent citation of a certain philosopher’s work can elevate the professional status of the given philosopher and the area of study in which the philosopher works. In other words, the citation practices in which individual philosophers engage can, and usually do, have cumulative effects. To put it another way, citation practices on the micro-level produce systemic and profession-wide effects, many of which have significant and lasting consequences.
Some of the most significant and enduring systemic effects of citation practices comprise the reproduction, in various forms, of the status quo in philosophy with respect to the exclusion or marginalization of some philosophers, including disabled philosophers, and the exclusion or marginalization of certain areas of inquiry in philosophy, including philosophy of disability. Thus, marginalized philosophers and privileged philosophers who aim to eliminate the current asymmetries in the profession increasingly scrutinize citation practices in the profession: Who gets cited? Where do they get cited? By whom do they cited? Who hasn’t been cited? Which body of work has been obscured, ignored, and disregarded?
In short, a growing number of philosophers have become cognizant of the political character of citation practices, asking, among other questions, whether philosophers who have engaged in sexual misconduct, or make racist and antisemitic claims, or endorse policies that violate the civil rights of LGBTQ people, should be promoted through the citation and use of their work.
To date, most of the inquiries into citation practices have been concerned with the gendered nature of current citation practices in philosophy, demonstrating the ways in which epistemic authority and professional recognition more often accrue to (white) male philosophers than to women philosophers and how the conferral of this epistemic authority and esteem affects hiring and promotion practices, reproduces biases in the profession, and even ultimately encourages women to leave the profession.
Although these critical inquiries into citation practices have helped to throw into relief the irreducibly political character of epistemic authority and esteem in philosophy, I want to argue nevertheless that critical inquiries about citation practices need to go beyond their current focus on who gets cited, how often they get cited, and in what venues, in order to examine how citation takes place, how it is done, and why a certain philosopher gets cited. For I maintain that even seemingly ameliorative citations can reinstate asymmetrical relations of power if they are done in careless or inappropriate ways.
I believe that the way in which many white feminist philosophers have in the past cited work by bell hooks, the Combahee River Collective, and Angela Davis especially is disingenuous and reproduces white supremacy in feminist philosophy. I certainly think that white feminist philosophers should draw upon the insights of these black feminists, as well as Latina feminists, and Indigenous feminists, among other marginalized and excluded feminists. My critical remarks in this context refer rather to the practice, which many readers and listeners of this blog will have come across, whereby a white feminist philosopher makes a claim early in an article or chapter about why it is important to incorporate analyses of race into feminist philosophy, accompanies the claim with an endnote or footnote to an array of work by black feminists and feminists of colour, then proceeds to advance an argument for the duration of the article or chapter that draws exclusively upon white feminist authors.
Increasingly, nondisabled philosophers, including some nondisabled philosophers who produce philosophical work on disability, cite disabled philosophers in ways that are disrespectful, reproducing the disadvantages that accrue to disabled philosophers. To be sure, I want nondisabled philosophers (and other disabled philosophers) to read/listen to the work that I do in philosophy of disability, to cite the work that I produce, and to use it in their own work. I am however concerned that my work be cited and used in a manner that does not by some means or in some fashion operate to disadvantage me and other disabled philosophers, but rather operates in the service of my interests, the interests of other disabled philosophers, and indeed the interests of disabled people beyond the university.
In the past year, a nondisabled male philosopher who writes on disability has cited me in two articles, misspelling my name on both occasions. Misspelling my name. The most public signifier of my work and indeed my existence. Needless to say, I do not welcome such casual citation of my work in philosophy of disability or of the work of any other disabled philosopher of disability. On the contrary, I regard this repeated carelessness with citation of my name and the work produced under it as disrespectful, both to me and ultimately to other disabled philosophers, especially disabled philosophers of disability.
Perhaps readers/listeners of this post will object that such an error is insignificant, that the citation itself is the pertinent factor that I should neither overlook nor discount. However, I think to the contrary that this error and the repetition of it are indicative of more systemic relations of power in the growing field of philosophy of disability. In particular, I think that the repeated occurrence of this error with respect to the spelling of my name is emblematic of how little genuine concern some nondisabled philosophers who produce critical philosophical work on disability have for the situation of disabled philosophers in the discipline and profession and how little they actually understand, let alone acknowledge, their own position of advantage and privilege relative to us, reinforcing and reconstituting the apparatus of disability.
posted by Shelley
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