Referencing (Giacomelli, 2025)

Referencing (Giacomelli, 2025) is an academic-artistic essay composed entirely of parenthetical citations, punctuation, and scholarly formatting, without a single word of prose. Drawing on the rhetoric of science, STS, semiotics, and deconstruction, the work argues that the parenthetical citation (Surname, year) operates as a device of epistemic delegation: a gesture that can replace argumentation while performing the appearance of rigour. The essay carries this logic to its breaking point, becoming at once a critique of citation practices in academic writing and its radical embodiment — a paper that is all apparatus and no body, an argument that outsources itself entirely and closes by citing itself.