Complaint!

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I just began this book, so maybe it'll be addressed, but what Ahmed downplays so far is that in the context of U. The institution has ways of handling these histories of violence to make them disappear, just like the family can contain the violence that’s happened inside it as a skeleton in the closet. We can sometimes refuse to be positive because it takes too much out of us, and we can decide not to be negative, because that takes too much out of us, as well.

To use the Lordeian formulation, the effort to rebuild the master’s house so that it can accommodate those for whom it was not intended cannot be understood purely as a reformist project. Creating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives does not actually include those who remain opposed to and harmed by the neoliberal university. 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.This succeeds where many other takes on bullying and harassment are too generic and fail to capture what power means if you are in these situations. Her most celebrated contribution has been the figure of the Feminist Killjoy, who shares a name with Ahmed’s popular blog, which she began writing alongside her 2017 work, Living a Feminist Life . There's probably a way to have the information condensed and one could just present it in a direct form, but then it would not highlight the writing style. However Sara Ahmed does great job out outlining the philosophies, feminist and otherwise, that really elevates this analysis to the next level.

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. I didn’t take his advice, but I have never forgotten those foreboding words, especially now that I have heard from other professors that I should keep my head down and do my work. Sara Ahmed follows the institutional life of complaints within the university, exploring how they begin, how they are processed and how they are ultimately stopped, thereby reproducing systems of whiteness, violence and silencing.

I read it after reading Laura Kipnis' Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus where complaints on campus have had serious consequences for some predatory professors. Ahmed likens complaints to biographies that tell a particular life story, reminding us that data is as experiential as it is theoretical (18): ‘The term complaint biography helps us to think of the life of a complaint in relation to the life of a person or a group of people […] To think of a complaint biography is to recognize that a complaint, in being lodged somewhere, starts somewhere else. I disagree with the role of the proposed supervisory arrangement, in which my would-be supervisor suggests I should satisfy her expectations for a dissertation. On the one hand, their concerns are deemed inconsequential—they’re trying to make something out of nothing—and on the other, they’re presented as malicious and threatening, as if they have the power to singlehandedly take the whole institution down.

Lots of helpful insight about structure and organisations in a sociological/political sense, but plenty of heartbreaking personal testimony to bring the points home. That may all sound obvious, as many have heard of churches and police departments shuffling around bad apples to new locations instead of cutting out the rot. But I think the thing that really slowed me down the most was the style in which the book is written.In Part One, ‘Institutional Mechanics’, Ahmed analyses the language, policies and procedures as well as other ‘nonperformatives’ (see also Judith Butler, 1993): institutional speech acts that do not bring into effect what they name (30, 80), such as nodding (80). I ask these rhetorical questions with Ahmed’s poignant gesture to the role of power in mind: ‘those who challenge how power works come to know how power works’ (47). It was a permanent job in one of the largest women’s studies programs in Europe, and I was in an incredibly supportive feminist environment. And whilst no doubt a difficult read for university leaders, they should read it to help them reflect on what is happening in their institutions and learn how they can truly implement those policies and practice to bring about fair and just equality of opportunity. She is the author of eleven works of nonfiction, the earliest of which are totems of feminist postmodernism, affect theory, and queer phenomenology.

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. 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. 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.At the same time, the most inventive academic work comes from those who occupy precarious positions.