Member-only story
The references I can no longer make
On a kind of citation that has dissolved past the point of being cited — and what we might still give back
I started writing in English not long ago — for the first time in my life — and found myself in a place where the culture around references is carefully kept. When you say something here, it matters to show where it came from. You place your own thought inside a wider conversation, and you name the people whose work you are standing on; by naming them, you also hand something back to that conversation.
When I first met this practice, it felt as though I had come upon something beautiful. To cite is to bring back, briefly, to the surface, the wisdom that has sunk to the bed of flowing time and become its foundation. And to make your own footing visible, so that a reader can test it, follow it back, and go further than you did, or in a slightly different direction — that is how it felt. I wanted to become someone who could give something back to this culture, and I still do.
And then, trying to do exactly that, I ran into a strange sensation.
The thing I could not cite
It happened in a small, practical way. I was writing a paragraph, and I wanted to add a reference — to be honest about where…
