Complaint!

Abstract

Making a complaint may sound like something fairly trivial and as Sara Ahmed tells us when complaints are lodged in the university they are often treated as such. They are brushed aside as moans and whinges and such behaviour is frequently ascribed to women, Black or Minority Ethnic people and LGBTQ, thus marginalising and ultimately silencing groups of people who have historically and contemporaneously been silenced. And yet most universities have procedures and processes through which staff and students can complain, not least as in Britain, in order to meet the Equality Act, for example. In this highly original and engaging book Sara Ahmed forensically reveals that making a complaint in the university system is not what it might seem to be; as she says in her opening sentence ‘To be heard complaining is not to be heard’. (1). As is well known, since it was widely reported, Sara Ahmed resigned from her university and indeed academia, because of the failure of her institution to respond satisfactorily to complaints made by students about sexual harassment. Ahmed had herself tried to support the students but to little avail. She explains in the book that she decided to undertake the research into making a complaint before she resigned and continued it, after a pause, after her resignation. The book is an ethnography of institutional process, control and reproduction. It is also an interrogation of racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism within the institution through the experiences of the complaint process. Sara Ahmed gathered the testimonies, as she describes them, through narrative interviews with 40 students, academics, researchers and administrators who had been involved in some way in a formal complaint process, about ‘unequal or unjust working conditions or abuses of power such as harassment and bullying’. (9). Most of the participants contacted Ahmed through her website or blog. The response to the complaints issue was overwhelming which is indicative of the extent of the problem and also the desire for someone to listen and give some acknowledgement and thus validation. Sara Ahmed is a well-known feminist and as she says she had become a feminist ear for her institution; now she was able to become a feminist ear for those outside in other institutions. This book also represents a feminist ear. Complaint, as Ahmed says, is a form of feminist pedagogy in that making a complaint is to speak out against abuse, harassment, discrimination and an unfair system frequently against women but also ‘people of colour’, disabled people and LGBTQ. It is a means of exposing the nature of institutions and how they work – how they work frequently to reproduce themselves, and reinforce themselves, thus resisting change. As a feminist ear and someone who had demonstrated her commitment to fighting for justice, as well as her autonomous position by resigning, Sara Ahmed evoked a strong sense of trust from the participants in that they felt they and their stories