Complaint!

De: Sara Ahmed

Narrado por: Pearl Hewitt

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.

©2021 Duke University Press (P)2022 Tantor

The authors perspective and framing of doors

Every institution personnel especially leaders and administrators should read this book. It helps to understand intersectionality and work better with different groups in the academia. The reader did a spectacular job.

“if queer maps are useful, they are also created by use.”

i read this book over the course of a few months. it took that long because i was actively experiencing a version of the circumstances the book describes.

so i took a lot of breaks. i found even the incredibly validating passages were difficult sometimes. but with each return, i learned more, had my mind blown, and felt overcome by the richness of the text. i was hearing someone speak back to me the complexities of asking for help; something i’d recently asked for in the workplace only to receive condescension and gaslighting in response.

ahmed turns language around to see it from every angle. it’s nuanced, passionate writing on a truly urgent experience. below is a quote that’s stuck with me:

“a complaint can be how you live with yourself because a complaint is an attempt to address what is wrong, not to cope with something, not to let it happen, not to let it keep happening. you refuse to adjust to what is unjust. a complaint can be a way of not doing nothing. i think the double negative is often the terrain of complaint.”

ahmed ties her points, ideas, and research to colonialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, class, queerness, and the detailed view expands and expands. the book is profound and enraging and affirming. i loved the mix of first-person accounts from others who’ve experienced abuses of power, ahmed’s way of storytelling, and research.

another quote i won’t forget: “if queer maps are useful, they are also created by use.”