Book Review: Complaint! by Sara Ahmed

Abstract

In May of 2016, Sara Ahmed announced that she had resigned from Goldsmiths following the university’s failure to respond to many years of allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women, and despite formal complaints from herself and others (Ahmed, 2016). However, the university’s failure to respond to sexual harassment was, at the same time, its achievement in maintaining systems of power and privilege within the institution. In her latest book, Complaint!, Sara Ahmed examines complaints of harassment within the academy. In doing so, she presents a detailed and compelling analysis of what leads people to file a formal complaint (and why they might not), the aftermath of complaining, and the various ways in which institutions wield their power to dismiss complaints and maintain systems of inequity. Two important assertions frame Ahmed’s analysis. First, the social perception of complaining as negative leads to the dismissal and silencing of individuals’ complaints. There is a tendency to associate the act of complaining with insignificant moments and complainers as pushy or annoying; as Ahmed (2021) notes, “to be heard as complaining is not to be heard” (p. 1). Ahmed’s book intervenes against this, providing a hearing for those who have been silenced, and making visible the ways in which institutions have silenced those whose experiences threaten to delegitimize their status. Second, complaint is inextricably linked to power. Ahmed analyzes how complaint can be a method of challenging power but also how institutions use their power to dismiss complaints and, by extension, the experiences of the individual lodging the complaint. Integrating concepts she has forwarded from previous work, such as “a feminist ear” (Ahmed, 2017), “nonperformativity” (Ahmed, 2012), and “institutional death” (Ahmed, 2019), Ahmed expertly and thoroughly dissects what comes before a complaint, what happens during the complaint process, what comes after a complaint, and the impact that this has on the person who has submitted the complaint. Complaint! takes as its unit of analysis the “complaint biography”—the entire life of a complaint in relation to the person or group complaining—and examines the complicated, nonlinear, and often incomplete timeline of complaints. Employing a feminist ear to hear both who is not heard and how they are not heard (Ahmed, 2021, p. 3), Ahmed analyzes Feminism & Psychology 2023, Vol. 33(2) 314–322 © The Author(s) 2022