Description
In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors—to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive—Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Sara Ahmed is an independent scholar and author of What's the Use?, Living a Feminist Life, and other books also published by Duke University Press. Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Hearing Complaint 1
Part I. Institutional Mechanics 27
1. Mind the Gap! Policies, Procedures, and Other Nonperformatives 29
2. On Being Stopped 69
Part II. The Immanence of Complaint 101
3. In the Thick of It 103
4. Occupied 137
Part III. If These Doors Could Talk? 175
5. Behind Closed Doors: Complaints and Institutional Violence 179
6. Holding the Door: Power, Promotion, Progression 220
Part IV. Conclusions 257
7. Collective Conclusions by Leila Whitley, Tiffany Page, and Alice Corble, with Heidi Hasbrouck, Chryssa Sdrolia and others 261
8. Complaint Collectives 274
Notes 311
References 343
Index 353
“Sara Ahmed always has her finger on the pulse of the times as she assists us to explore the deeper meanings and philosophical nuances of quotidian concepts and practices. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, Complaint! is precisely the text we need at this moment as we seek to understand and transform the institutional structures promoting racism and heteropatriarchy.”
“In her latest contribution to our knowledge, Sara Ahmed gifts us with a book about the phenomenology of complaint and the layered, entangled complexity of how power works institutionally. She foregrounds that to complain is to transgress. To transgress is to become a site of negation. To negate is to trigger an institution into protecting the status quo through risk-adverse processes that are experienced as violent and exhaustive. Ahmed’s intellectually expansive book achieves two things: it exposes the meaning, experiences, and perceptions of complaint and provides testimony to the courage of those who complain, who fight, who believe justice should not just appear to be done; it must be done.”
"[Ahmed] presents a strong argument that power in higher education tends to protect itself, that diversity initiatives are often nothing more than window dressing, and that those who file complaints about a hostile work environment often face accusations of disloyalty or troublemaking. . . . Most of the charges here are broad and general, but anyone who has worked in higher education will recognize much of what Ahmed brings to light. Sharp criticism of an overlooked systemic problem in higher education."
"In her powerful new book . . . Sara Ahmed builds on a series of oral and written testimonies from students and employees who have complained to higher education universities about harassment and inequality. Here, she asks readers to think about some inescapable questions: What happens when complaints are pushed under the rug? How is complaint radical feminism? And, how can we learn about power from those who choose to fight against the powerful?"
"This is audacious but persuasive critique, which accrues its power by stealth. Complaint! is dense with insight, but admirably lucid."
"Inspired by the students she worked with, Ahmed’s new book examines the act—indeed, the feminist pedagogy—of complaining within an organization. With the help of testimonials from individuals who filed complaints of harassment, bullying, and abuse at Goldsmiths and other universities, Ahmed explores the cracks within these formal systems and illustrates the painful processes that survivors experience too often."
"An absolutely brilliant endeavor. . . . The real nuance and sophistication of this book, written with such emotional and intellectual insight, the means by which Ahmed identifies strategies of institutional power in relation to power in relation to harassment and abuse is revelatory, thorny, painful, and very, very necessary."
"Sara Ahmed’s Complaint! is an antidote to apathy. . . . The potent reminder that Ahmed offers is that we are not the ones with the problem, that a number of voices raised up in complaint can help identify that the problem lies elsewhere."
"It’s feminism that isn’t out to win friends but should certainly influence people. It’s angry because anger is required. And it’s collective and inclusive. . . . ever quick to pick up on ironies and contradictions, she nails it time after time. 'Making a complaint is often necessary because of a crisis or trauma,' she writes, but 'the complaint often becomes part of the crisis or trauma.' Such phrases characterise Ahmed’s Möbius band idiolect; they hit home because of the writer’s extraordinary skill."
"Ahmed brings great authority and gravity to Complaint!, from her own experiences (she resigned from an institution after they mishandled a series of complaints), her engagement with a “complaint collective” in the UK, and her decades-long scholarship in feminist, queer, and race studies. Black feminism and women of color feminism anchor the book. The author does not flinch at the difficult intersections where one underrepresented or traditionally marginalized group seems at odds with another; instead, she examines the effects of complaint in each area of these intersections, retaining her sharp focus on an analysis of power dynamics."
"This is another insightful book in Ahmed’s well-regarded series of considerations of what acting as a feminist in non-feminist institutions means. . . . Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals."
"Ahmed illuminates how institutions like the university are designed for precisely the people who can and continue to flourish while miming theoretical righteousness and perpetuating violent norms."
