In Defense of the House Style: AI screening, footnotes, and mengapa Retorik tidak dioptimalkan untuk akreditasi SINTA

Min Seong Kim (Graduate Program in Cultural Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta)

Retorik: Jurnal Ilmu Humaniora
Vol. 14 No. 1 (2026): Retorik 14(1)

In this editorial, I explain the choices that Retorik has made regarding citation style and the use of generative AI in articles, including its decision not to adopt threshold-based AI-detection cutoffs. I also elaborate on the mandatory inclusion of author statements, starting with volume 14, issue 1. I present the choices that pertain to the form of the journal—such as the preference for Chicago’s notes-and-bibliography citation style—as deliberate attempts to embody something of the journal’s substance, that is, its critical orientation. Although Retorik cannot afford to ignore the requirements of Indonesia’s academic-governance apparatuses, this does not entail passive acquiescence to trends that represent the very objects of cultural criticism. If, as Theodor Adorno wrote, “[w]rong life cannot be lived rightly,” it is nonetheless possible to strive to “live less wrongly.”