Complaint!

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She is the author of eleven works of nonfiction, the earliest of which are totems of feminist postmodernism, affect theory, and queer phenomenology. This is another insightful book in Ahmed’s well-regarded series of considerations of what acting as a feminist in non-feminist institutions means.

A lot of the really important work—in Black studies, in gender studies, in women’s studies—comes out of a battle with institutions for something. Only 4 stars because I felt some parts of the text were less accessible, but overall absolutely worth a read for anyone who has ever tried to complain to an institution or has not complained but wanted to. We use cookies on this site to understand how you use our content, and to give you the best browsing experience.

So many people seem to go into academia with the idea that it will be a kind of refuge for their wonder. Formal complaints can sound just like the master’s tools—bureaucratic, dry, tedious—but they’re also where you actually come to hear and learn about institutional mechanics, how institutions reproduce themselves. Meanwhile, the ugly qualities of the incidents complained about often attach themselves to those complaining.

In On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Sara Ahmed had already begun an institutional ethnography on the language of diversity and how diversity and its initiatives are institutionalised performative acts. Are there other people who have influenced you as you made that transition, loosening your attachment to the genre of academic writing? There was a lot of media coverage of your departure from academia, but I’m curious to know more about your early relationship to it. However Sara Ahmed does great job out outlining the philosophies, feminist and otherwise, that really elevates this analysis to the next level. The file is put away in a cabinet, and the cabinet is in a room, and the door to the room is locked, and that’s that.Overall this review feels really negative for a three star rating, but the strength of the book's overall substance really made the executional weaknesses more visible. 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. What, then, is the function of the university, these external committees and the role of a professor? It’s not only that there’s a gap between statements about inclusivity and diversity and what actually happens. Sara Ahmed breaks down the systems and methods institutions use to ignore complaints which i found so fascinating.

That being said, there were some stylistic and structural choices that detracted from the work as a whole.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. There was some connection between the loosening of my writing style—trying to get at the affect and the sound of the thing I was describing—and feeling more directly connected to readers. Most glaringly, the book is distractingly repetitive, with Ahmed often explaining and rephrasing excerpts from complainant interviews that don't really need to be explained. Through the extensive use of the door metaphor, Sarah Ahmed offers the language and understanding that is needed to tend to the wounds of exclusion and rejection. It can be incredibly painful to know what happened, to know what you went through, but still you can’t say it, you can’t get it out.

In addition to the analysis of complaint as a method, 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. Moreover, the attention drawn to the common experience of making a complaint in spite of the variety of issues experienced (sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or most often some combination) was something I had not seen before, making the book really impactful for me. These insides will make my walk as a diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism professional much more effective.

When you make a complaint about harassment that’s endemic to a university, you’re pitting yourself against people who don’t want that problem to be recognized.