Sara Ahmed always has her finger on the pulse of the times as she assists us to explore the deeper meanings and philosophical nuances of quotidian concepts and practices. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, Complaint! is precisely the text we need at this moment as we seek to understand and transform the institutional structures promoting racism and heteropatriarchy. -- Angela Y. Davis
In her latest contribution to our knowledge, Sara Ahmed gifts us with a book about the phenomenology of complaint and the layered, entangled complexity of how power works institutionally. She foregrounds that to complain is to transgress. To transgress is to become a site of negation. To negate is to trigger an institution into protecting the status quo through risk-adverse processes that are experienced as violent and exhaustive. Ahmed's intellectually expansive book achieves two things: it exposes the meaning, experiences, and perceptions of complaint and provides testimony to the courage of those who complain, who fight, who believe justice should not just appear to be done; it must be done. -- Aileen Moreton-Robinson, author of * Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism *
[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. . . . Most of the charges here are broad and general, but anyone who has worked in higher education will recognize much of what Ahmed brings to light. Sharp criticism of an overlooked systemic problem in higher education. * Kirkus Reviews *
In her powerful new book . . . 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. Here, she asks readers to think about some inescapable questions: What happens when complaints are pushed under the rug? How is complaint radical feminism? And, how can we learn about power from those who choose to fight against the powerful? -- Rebecca Schneid * Indy Week *
This is audacious but persuasive critique, which accrues its power by stealth. Complaint! is dense with insight, but admirably lucid. -- Zora Simic * Australian Book Review *
Inspired by the students she worked with, Ahmed's new book examines the act-indeed, the feminist pedagogy-of complaining within an organization. With the help of testimonials from individuals who filed complaints of harassment, bullying, and abuse at Goldsmiths and other universities, Ahmed explores the cracks within these formal systems and illustrates the painful processes that survivors experience too often. -- Yvette Dionne and Rosa Cartagena * Bitch *
An absolutely brilliant endeavor. . . . The real nuance and sophistication of this book, written with such emotional and intellectual insight, the means by which Ahmed identifies strategies of institutional power in relation to power in relation to harassment and abuse is revelatory, thorny, painful, and very, very necessary. -- Linda M. Morra * Getting Lit with Linda *
Sara Ahmed's Complaint! is an antidote to apathy. . . . The potent reminder that Ahmed offers is that we are not the ones with the problem, that a number of voices raised up in complaint can help identify that the problem lies elsewhere.
-- Eda Gunaydin * Sydney Review of Books *
