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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.
List of contents
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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
