A Complaint Biography

Introduction

The following essay originally appeared as a blog entry on Sara Ahmed's public research site, Feminist Killjoys. Ahmed is a feminist phenomenologist and independent scholar who has turned her attention toward institutional life. Her book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012) blends qualitative interviewing techniques with a materialist analysis of public relations messaging and paperwork designed to manage diversity and racism. Following this work, she founded the research blog to invite public engagement on the essays and lectures that would form Living a Feminist Life (2017), which explores the source of feminist concepts and critique in everyday life. The blog seeded a related book project, in what might be considered a triptych on feminist praxis, On Complaint (forthcoming)—documenting a process of institutional deflection related to complaints of racism and sexual harassment in university settings, and offering ways to counter it.

As an inspiration for this special issue, Ahmed's feminist phenomenology stands out for its ability to name tensions between procedure and documentation, where acts of writing carry a force in excess of the "rule" they presume to follow. Understanding paperwork as a tool to both address and deflect complaints, the file appears as an object made to manipulate time and exhaust energy. By interviewing people who have engaged the complaint process, Ahmed developed a means of tracking tensions in the act of reporting, incorporating silences and the effect of time on decisions to withdraw complaints—to "get on with life."

Developing a working vocabulary from the interviews themselves, Ahmed proposes alternative forms of listening and accountability that exceed the reputation-management functions of university protocols. She names publicity as a counterweight to the secrecy surrounding complaint-making. In 2016 she publicly resigned from her position at Goldsmiths, University of London to draw attention to a mass of neglected sexual harassment complaints lodged by students. The departure helped puncture the public narrative of redress signaled by the presence of reporting protocols, even as the protocols "stopped and stalled" complaints from ever reaching the public. In this essay, Ahmed models a listening technique that takes place outside of the grievance protocol while reflecting on it publicly.

Ebony Coletu

Posted on August 9, 2017

I have just begun research for a new project on complaint....