Maintaining a Luhmann-style zettelkasten is, in part, a practice of destabilizing someone else's structured thinking. Complex ideas developed by a writer, once skillfully woven into a fabric of singular theses, are unwound from their original focus in order to yield separate, "atomic" ideas that can be reimagined, reinterpreted, and, ultimately, repurposed for new work. While on the surface this pillaging of someone's writing may seem destructive, even an affront to something sacred, it is ac...
